The seven remaining Greenpeace protesters have come down from Sizewell B nuclear power station this afternoon. Appalling weather conditions left their radiation monitoring equipment waterlogged and as a result it was impossible to guarantee their safety.
Emma Gibson of Greenpeace said: "This action has succeeded in exposing the government's secret plan to build new nuclear power stations and communicated the message that new nuclear power will be fought every step of the way."
The Heysham 2 nuclear power station - owned by troubled generator British Energy - was shut down last night. It is believed that the closure is due to an electrical fault in the plant's nuclear reactor. BE were unable to state how long the plant will be closed. With their Torness plant already closed, and scheduled outages of other reactors, at least one third of BE's nuclear generating capacity is now currently down.
Investigations by Greenpeace show that the Heysham 2 nuclear plant in Lancashire is facing the same technical problems which have shut both reactors at its sister plant in Torness, Scotland. The problems have been developing over the past decade. The closure of Heysham 2 would cause a further financial shockwave to British Energy which has already suspended trading of its shares and is seeking a massive cash injection from Government.
Greenpeace said today that the closure of British Energy's nuclear plant at Torness because of a fault in its reactor cooling system was further evidence that nuclear power is not only dangerous but is a technology that can't be relied on to deliver the UK's electricity.
Greenpeace described today's announcement by the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate (NII) as "A shocking indictment of Sellafield's continuing safety crisis."
In particular the NII reported today that BNFL has so far failed to fully implement 25 of the 28 Sellafield site safety recommendations the NII made last year, and that it expects full completion to take until the end of 2002.
