Post by Mitch on Oct 26, 2004 13:53:01 GMT
FROM COAL MINING TO NUCLEAR POWER
If you glance at the Whitehaven News, local paper, whilst in Whitehaven and surrounds, there’s usually a few articles on Sellafield Nuclear Power station. Articles range from the occasional safety mishap, to local people who have trained and work now for Sellafield. What comes across is that nuclear energy and Sellafield is ingrained in the lives of people along this Cumbrian coastline, in the same sense that coal mining once was. Talk to local people, and they are behind Sellafield. They see this nuclear power plant as a key provider of jobs in the area, and sometimes their frustrations at ‘do good environmentalists’ surface. Many engineers and workers previously involved in the coal industry have transferred their skills across into nuclear power, and they defend the plant in the sense that they are defending their jobs.
British Nuclear Fuels Ltd (BNFL) have been rather clever here, pushing out into all aspects of local communities, sponsoring this and that, getting involved, training local people and paying well no doubt. Their newspaper ‘Focus’, is full of information on local school trips to Sellafield, innovative ideas put forward by employees, updates on the latest award won by Sellafield, chummy pictures with Digby Jones from the CBI. All rather an inviting ‘carrot’, and given the choice local people may well prefer developing engineering skills and so forth than working in supermarkets or call centres! This part of the debate, it seems, has not been considered – and where the environmental argument has failed to convince local people, BNFL have stepped in rather cleverly.
Pressure groups such as CND, and groups in Ireland have emphasised the lapse waste management record of Sellafield, once Windscale renowned for the nuclear disaster of the late 1950s. They highlight the amounts of nuclear waste floating across the Irish Sea from Sellafield, and the long-term implications of this. Also, now is the new fear of terrorism, and the potential disaster that could follow from a terrorist attack on Sellafield. There was a time when Dublin and other towns and cities along this stretch of the Irish coast relied heavily on the coal imports from Whitehaven and Workington pits. Indeed development of cities like Dublin grew out of such reliance on coal from this area, and off the back of men, and of women and children who worked in pits like William Pit, Kells Pit, King Pit, and later Haig Pit sunk in 1914-1916.
There’s a history of struggle in this area of Cumbria, struggle for survival and jobs. Winning the environmental argument needs to be a little more clever than pictures of Ronan Keeting holding a postcard. It needs to listen to these stories, connect, understand and move forward together. Connecting environmental arguments to arguments for a new system not based on greed and profit might prove more fruitful in winning local community support and essential in reversing perceptions of BNFL local hero, environmentalist do-gooder.
The Sellafield Contractors Group was one of the sponsors of the recently published volume two ‘Poems of the Pits’, by miner John W. Skelly. So far, BNFL are well ahead on this issue. People will live with risk for a job, as they did in the past down the pits.
REBRANDING - FROM WINSCALE TO THE SELLAFIELD
British Nuclear Fuels Ltd (BNFL) reported pre-tax profits of £228m in the year to the end of March 1999, up 42.5% on the year before. “I’ve always felt strongly opposed to Sellafield', comments Hewson. 'It is 60 miles away from the Irish coast. It is pumping 2 million gallons of radio active liquid waste into the Irish sea every day, making the Irish Sea the most radioactive sea in the world. If an accident happens at the plant, or if there is a terrorist attack, depending on which way the wind blows, Dublin, Dundalk, Drogheda, Belfast, and vast parts of Ireland, would be uninhabitable. Forever”. (Ali Hewson, www.shutsellafield.com/about.htm)
There’s been a few ‘sparkling reactions’ here at re-branded Sellafield, known in the postwar period as Windscale. It was here at Windscale in 1947 that the UK first started to produce plutonium under the Atlee government who wanted to build a British atomic bomb. This site is home to the Thorp Reprocessing Plant, and the worlds very first industrial scale nuclear processing plant. Problems began to emerge at Windscale in 1957 when there was a serious fire which resulted in the release of large amounts of radioactive energy. There’s a long line of safety hazard incidents, including recently in 2000 when a report by the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate (NII) highlighted the fact that safety records had been systematically faked, and that the plant had a management culture of complacency and incompetence. BNFL dumps millions of litres of radioactive waste into the Irish sea every day.
Sellafield Visitors Centre
Now, prepare yourself for a surreal experience – ‘How will you react? If you’ve ever seen the Michael Crichton film ‘Coma’ (1978), then you’ll know what I mean when I say visiting the Sellafield Visitors Centre is a little bit like Geneviève Bujold’s trip to the benign human coma building. No human bodies descended on strings admittedly, but the staff here have the same surreal sweet approach. Conspiracy thrillers indeed - The Sellafield new ‘independent’ interactive exhibition is produced by the Science Museum, London for BNFL. As you enter the exhibition you can read the Science Museum’s declaration of independence, emphasising that BNFL have had no influence whatsoever on the content. The exhibition certainly does delve into controversial areas in the energy debate. It’s a rather unusual visitor’s centre, which does offer some opportunity to explore a critic of nuclear power, and other sources of power less detrimental to the environment, whilst simultaneously exploring facts such as how much of our fuel is produced by nuclear power stations. It might ‘choke’ a little, within the historical context of environmental damage done by Windscale/Sellafield, but that’s for you to judge. There are exhibitions within ‘Sparkling Reaction’ on activism against nuclear power.
Curiosity would no doubt lead you here and the kids will have a ball yanking those knobs and pressing those buttons in the numerous interactive/hands-on displays. A variety of opinions are stated in big white lettering against large black ‘Kubrick’ like monoliths in the exhibition called ‘The Core’. All a bit weird! The Immersion Cinema is a virtual experience which takes you to ‘an exciting world’ where you can control and build your own power station using electronic touch screens – God forbid. There’s certainly a bit of debate going on in this exhibition and there’s an opportunity to ‘have your say’, but it appears somewhat hollow and surface driven, part of the re-branding. Ah well, yank those knobs, press those buttons and judge for yourself whether you’re having a sparking reaction. For further surreal antics see – Hack Green Nuclear Bunker, now retired – www.hackgreen.co.uk, watch out for the radioactive mouse - surreal!
Move upstairs to the BNFL exhibition, which really is a PR job.
www.shutsellafield.com
If you glance at the Whitehaven News, local paper, whilst in Whitehaven and surrounds, there’s usually a few articles on Sellafield Nuclear Power station. Articles range from the occasional safety mishap, to local people who have trained and work now for Sellafield. What comes across is that nuclear energy and Sellafield is ingrained in the lives of people along this Cumbrian coastline, in the same sense that coal mining once was. Talk to local people, and they are behind Sellafield. They see this nuclear power plant as a key provider of jobs in the area, and sometimes their frustrations at ‘do good environmentalists’ surface. Many engineers and workers previously involved in the coal industry have transferred their skills across into nuclear power, and they defend the plant in the sense that they are defending their jobs.
British Nuclear Fuels Ltd (BNFL) have been rather clever here, pushing out into all aspects of local communities, sponsoring this and that, getting involved, training local people and paying well no doubt. Their newspaper ‘Focus’, is full of information on local school trips to Sellafield, innovative ideas put forward by employees, updates on the latest award won by Sellafield, chummy pictures with Digby Jones from the CBI. All rather an inviting ‘carrot’, and given the choice local people may well prefer developing engineering skills and so forth than working in supermarkets or call centres! This part of the debate, it seems, has not been considered – and where the environmental argument has failed to convince local people, BNFL have stepped in rather cleverly.
Pressure groups such as CND, and groups in Ireland have emphasised the lapse waste management record of Sellafield, once Windscale renowned for the nuclear disaster of the late 1950s. They highlight the amounts of nuclear waste floating across the Irish Sea from Sellafield, and the long-term implications of this. Also, now is the new fear of terrorism, and the potential disaster that could follow from a terrorist attack on Sellafield. There was a time when Dublin and other towns and cities along this stretch of the Irish coast relied heavily on the coal imports from Whitehaven and Workington pits. Indeed development of cities like Dublin grew out of such reliance on coal from this area, and off the back of men, and of women and children who worked in pits like William Pit, Kells Pit, King Pit, and later Haig Pit sunk in 1914-1916.
There’s a history of struggle in this area of Cumbria, struggle for survival and jobs. Winning the environmental argument needs to be a little more clever than pictures of Ronan Keeting holding a postcard. It needs to listen to these stories, connect, understand and move forward together. Connecting environmental arguments to arguments for a new system not based on greed and profit might prove more fruitful in winning local community support and essential in reversing perceptions of BNFL local hero, environmentalist do-gooder.
The Sellafield Contractors Group was one of the sponsors of the recently published volume two ‘Poems of the Pits’, by miner John W. Skelly. So far, BNFL are well ahead on this issue. People will live with risk for a job, as they did in the past down the pits.
REBRANDING - FROM WINSCALE TO THE SELLAFIELD
British Nuclear Fuels Ltd (BNFL) reported pre-tax profits of £228m in the year to the end of March 1999, up 42.5% on the year before. “I’ve always felt strongly opposed to Sellafield', comments Hewson. 'It is 60 miles away from the Irish coast. It is pumping 2 million gallons of radio active liquid waste into the Irish sea every day, making the Irish Sea the most radioactive sea in the world. If an accident happens at the plant, or if there is a terrorist attack, depending on which way the wind blows, Dublin, Dundalk, Drogheda, Belfast, and vast parts of Ireland, would be uninhabitable. Forever”. (Ali Hewson, www.shutsellafield.com/about.htm)
There’s been a few ‘sparkling reactions’ here at re-branded Sellafield, known in the postwar period as Windscale. It was here at Windscale in 1947 that the UK first started to produce plutonium under the Atlee government who wanted to build a British atomic bomb. This site is home to the Thorp Reprocessing Plant, and the worlds very first industrial scale nuclear processing plant. Problems began to emerge at Windscale in 1957 when there was a serious fire which resulted in the release of large amounts of radioactive energy. There’s a long line of safety hazard incidents, including recently in 2000 when a report by the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate (NII) highlighted the fact that safety records had been systematically faked, and that the plant had a management culture of complacency and incompetence. BNFL dumps millions of litres of radioactive waste into the Irish sea every day.
Sellafield Visitors Centre
Now, prepare yourself for a surreal experience – ‘How will you react? If you’ve ever seen the Michael Crichton film ‘Coma’ (1978), then you’ll know what I mean when I say visiting the Sellafield Visitors Centre is a little bit like Geneviève Bujold’s trip to the benign human coma building. No human bodies descended on strings admittedly, but the staff here have the same surreal sweet approach. Conspiracy thrillers indeed - The Sellafield new ‘independent’ interactive exhibition is produced by the Science Museum, London for BNFL. As you enter the exhibition you can read the Science Museum’s declaration of independence, emphasising that BNFL have had no influence whatsoever on the content. The exhibition certainly does delve into controversial areas in the energy debate. It’s a rather unusual visitor’s centre, which does offer some opportunity to explore a critic of nuclear power, and other sources of power less detrimental to the environment, whilst simultaneously exploring facts such as how much of our fuel is produced by nuclear power stations. It might ‘choke’ a little, within the historical context of environmental damage done by Windscale/Sellafield, but that’s for you to judge. There are exhibitions within ‘Sparkling Reaction’ on activism against nuclear power.
Curiosity would no doubt lead you here and the kids will have a ball yanking those knobs and pressing those buttons in the numerous interactive/hands-on displays. A variety of opinions are stated in big white lettering against large black ‘Kubrick’ like monoliths in the exhibition called ‘The Core’. All a bit weird! The Immersion Cinema is a virtual experience which takes you to ‘an exciting world’ where you can control and build your own power station using electronic touch screens – God forbid. There’s certainly a bit of debate going on in this exhibition and there’s an opportunity to ‘have your say’, but it appears somewhat hollow and surface driven, part of the re-branding. Ah well, yank those knobs, press those buttons and judge for yourself whether you’re having a sparking reaction. For further surreal antics see – Hack Green Nuclear Bunker, now retired – www.hackgreen.co.uk, watch out for the radioactive mouse - surreal!
Move upstairs to the BNFL exhibition, which really is a PR job.
www.shutsellafield.com