Public Lecture: What New Nuclear Build Means to the Northwest.

From Niger to the  North West
Uranium – From Niger to the North West


Public Lecture: What New Nuclear Build Means to the Northwest.

Professor Robin Grimes, Chief Scientific Advisor to the Foreign & Commonwealth Office, will give a lecture on 6th November at the Storey in Lancaster on “What New Nuclear Build Means to the North West.”

Radiation Free Lakeland will be holding a demonstration and leafleting outside the event from 5pm. The lecture begins at 6pm. Professor Grimes is an enthusiast of new nuclear build as a solution to climate change, despite there being no solution to the problem of dangerous nuclear wastes.  No solution to the profligate use of public money, militarism, chemicals, fresh water and fossil fuel propping up the most dangerous industry in the world.  Professor Robin Grime’s nuclear new build obsession is an epic diversion and distraction away from renewables and energy efficiency – which can actually deliver climate solutions in the time scales necessary.   Photographs leaked by a whistleblower show that Sellafield wastes have been neglected despite billions spent in public money.  Should nuclear experts like Prof Grimes be promoting an increase in the nuclear footprint….or researching, lobbying and working all out to stop and contain the existing wastes?

What New Nuclear Build Means to the North West:

1. Drives the push for uranium mining worldwide eg. Peru, The Grand Canyon USA, Niger, Australia, Russia

2.Uranium arrives at Ellesmere Port Dock where it is transported by road to Capenhurst. It is enriched at Capenhurst and then taken again by road to the Springfields fuel rod conversion plant near Preston. During all these processes it in the form of a Uranium Hexaflouride

3. The Fuel Making Process produces radioactive wastes which are released to the River Ribble and dumped in Clifton Marsh landfill. Depleted Uranium is stored at Capenhurst.

4. The fuel is taken to nuclear reactors including Heysham which is being restarted despite “a crack in the boiler spine, a metal rod supporting the weight of the reactor” (Institution of Engineering and Technology).

5. Once the fuel is burnt (spent fuel) it travels by rail to Sellafield where it is reprocessed increasing the volume of waste x180. Sellafield uses over £30M of gas every year.

6. Next to Sellafield is 500 acres of beautiful farmland, hedgerows and ancient tracks. This land should be a buffer zone around the worlds most dangerous stockpile of nuclear waste. Instead the government plan to sell it to the same companies responsible for Fukushima in order to build 3 new nuclear reactors.

7. There is no “solution” to the problem of nuclear waste apart from distributing it to the environment. Not only to the air and sea but also to landfill. And then there is melting down radioactive scrap metal and selling it onto the open market. Finally, the proposal for deep burial of heat generating nuclear wastes.



Professor Grimes : In the context of concerns over climate change and carbon abatement, electricity production via nuclear power plant is firmly back on the world agenda as a source of clean, baseload electricity.  With such a globalised industry it’s easy to forget that the UK has a history of pioneering discoveries and Engineering achievements in this field, and that ‘nuclear’ is a technology with which Lancaster has a special relationship as a result of the specialist research interests of experts at Lancaster University, the power stations at Heysham and its proximity to Springfields and Sellafield.  Robin will review the history and summarise the options for the UK in the future.


More links:






Geological Disposal:

4 thoughts on “Public Lecture: What New Nuclear Build Means to the Northwest.

  1. Since 2006 unregulated nuclear radiation discharges from the Hinkley Point site in Somerset have caused double the rate of perinatal mortality and a 45% increase in skin cancers. Sudden deaths are becoming more common. Vents in the defueled Magnox reactors are still not shuttered following the lead of the Bradwell Magnox site. Politicians must revoke Chris Huhne’s unilateral decision that ‘health detriment’ is justified by the benefits of nuclear power. WHAT benefits?

  2. Pingback: Nuclear Champion or Nuclear Conman? | Radiation Free Lakeland

  3. Pingback: UK’s professor Robin Grimes knows who has the money, in the “nuclear debate” « nuclear-news

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