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Ireland Steps Up Campaign Against British Nuclear Plant
London (AFP) Nov 24, 2001 Ireland issued a strong renewed call to Britain to close down the Sellafield nuclear waste retreatment plant on Saturday, running a large ad in a prominent British newspaper. "Close Sellafield!" read the ad in Saturday's issue of The Times. "Sellafield poses an unacceptable and unnecessary risk to our environment." The advertisement was signed by 110 members of Prime Minister Bertie Ahern's Fianna Fail party. "My party is the largest in Ireland, and we want to bring home to people in Britain how strongly we in Ireland feel about the danger posed to the entire population of these islands by the current operations at Sellafield and in particular by the proposed new MOX operation," Ahern said in a statement. He was referring to the mixed plutonium and uranium oxide (MOX) plant at Sellafield completed in 1996, which has been marred by financial concerns, court challenges and scandals since 1999 which have stalled its production schedule. "We will campaign ceaselessly to prevent the opening of the MOX plant and to shut Sellafield - for all our sakes," Ahern said. Ireland has been pressing for the closure of the Sellafield complex for years, arguing that plant -- located in northwestern England, not far from Ireland -- poses environmental dangers. Ahern has called the plant a "surviving dinosaur of a defunct military-industrial complex" that posed the single most serious threat to the Irish environment. Ireland fears the 1950s-era plant pollutes the Irish Sea and may be a target for a terrorist attack. The country brought its complaints before a UN maritime tribunal last week in a bid to block Britain's plans to expand the plant and make operational the MOX, on which work is set to begin December 20.
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