Nuclear Power is on the rocks – hot radioactive rocks.
There have been a string of accidents, fires and outages in the last couple of years, probably due to cost-cutting and lack of investment in new equipment.
Nuclear Power stations are ageing. Many of them are due to be completely shut down by 2020. But some of them might not survive that long, judging by the catalogue of incidents racking up.
Does this kind of event make the national or international news ? Sometimes. Nobody wants to be sensationalist about it. It doesn’t get much commentary or opinion following.
Here’s only the very latest happening :-
“Fire breaks out at nuclear power station : Sunday, 4 July 2010 : An overnight fire at the Sizewell B nuclear power plant near Leiston on the Suffolk coast was brought under control by eight fire crews after more than six hours. The blaze, in a building housing a charcoal absorber which filters gases, was the second incident this year. In March, 50 firefighters spent almost seven hours tackling a similar blaze which resulted in the plant being closed. Jim Crawford, the station director, said the latest fire had posed no danger to the public.”
And that’s it – the entire report. It’s quite astonishing that there is no further investigation, exploration or explanation.
As one of the commenters, Jason Brown wrote “And The “Independent” devotes precisely TWO paragraphs to this story? Ah, hallo? Chernobyl anyone?”