Nuclear power is dangerous so why do governments cut costs

Two related articles in the Guardian today 16 pages apart are small parts of an important nuclear jigsaw.

On page 9 we are told that a British Ministry of Defence health and safety report released under the Freedom of Information Act has concluded according to the paper that, “The risk of accidents and radioactive leaks from Britain’s aging nuclear bombs and submarines is getting “progressively worse” because of spending cutbacks”.

So Cameron’s ‘big society’ cutbacks could lead inadvertently to a big bang.

The report states that the number of nuclear incidents is “too high” and that there is a shortage safety engineers.

Skipping forward to page 25 we find an article headlined “China’s cheap nuclear plants ‘increase risk’”.

Here the story relates to Wikileaks cables from 2008 on plans by the Chinese Government to build up to 60 new nuclear plants by 2020.

The cables, if true, reveal that the Chinese government is not using newer, supposedly more safe “passive safety technology” reactors. They are instead replicating older models.

Why is there no link between the two articles highlighting that, wow, east and west we go low cost first, safety a distant second.

Earlier this month the Japanese Government sacked Nobuaki Terasaka the head of their Nuclear and Safety Industry Agency.

The Irish Times of August 5^th reported that the agency had been accused of having “manipulated a public meeting in rural Japan to overcome local opposition to a controversial mixed fuel reactor”.

Is it any wonder that in Britain a recent poll reported in the English Independent on 6^th August found that only 30% of the those questioned were in favour of nuclear power”.

Finally have a look at these pictures bu Kazuma Obara who got inside the Fukushima nuclear power plant and took some fascinating photos.

You can see them through:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/interactive/2011/aug/20/fukushima-interactive-guide