press releases

Trains carrying dangerous radioactive waste are passing through London on a weekly basis, and local Greenpeace volunteers will hit the streets on Saturday, 20 May to ask Londoners to help stop these hazardous transports.

Reacting to news that Tony Blair is to say in a speech tonight that replacing nuclear power stations is "back on the agenda with a vengeance", Stephen Tindale, Greenpeace's Executive Director, said: "Wasting billions of pounds of taxpayers' money on a ridiculously dangerous and antiquated form of energy is certainly back on the agenda.

"Nuclear power presents a real terrorist threat, costs a stupid amount of money, doesn't help in the fight against climate change and certainly won't plug the energy gap. To put this hazard back on the agenda is recklessly incompetent."

Blackburn doctor Reza Hossain is spending this week settling into his new home - the dense forests of Papua New Guinea. Reza flew across the world last Tuesday to join a Greenpeace camp trying to save the world-renowned Paradise Forests, which stretch from South East Asia, across the islands of Indonesia, on to Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands in the Pacific.

Giant chemicals firms representing private business interests are trying to undermine and destroy EU attempts to protect the public from hazardous chemicals, reveals a Greenpeace report released today.

Falling sperm counts, rising infertility and genital abnormalities in babies could all result from exposure to hazardous man-made chemicals used in perfumes, carpets, electronics, clothing and a host of other consumer goods, reveals a Greenpeace report released today [1].

The study, "Fragile: Our reproductive health and chemical exposure", presents a worrying picture of an increase in reproductive health disorders which mirror the rising presence of man-made chemicals in our lives.

Responding to the Committee on Radioactive Waste's recommendations about UK nuclear waste disposal Greenpeace campaigner Jean McSorley said:

"CORWM is recommending we bury radioactive waste in a big hole in the ground somewhere in the UK. This is an environmental time bomb for future generations because the waste will inevitably degrade and leak. The least dangerous option would be to keep the waste on the reactor sites in accessible storage."

Greenpeace UK Executive Director Stephen Tindale said:

"Menzies Campbell has set the gold standard for green speeches. He was not only rich on vision but rich on policy details too. He's right that the failure to commit to very basic common sense measures in the face of climate change is the key problem in the UK, so Greenpeace fully supports Campbell's challenge to the other parties. There's too much talk from New Labour and not yet enough substance from the Conservatives."

In response to the announcement of planning consent for Whitelee, at 332 mega-watts the Europe's biggest ever onshore wind farm, Greenpeace campaigner Charlie Kronick said:

Greenpeace will show David Cameron around an extensive low carbon development in Nydalen, Oslo tomorrow (Friday 21st April). The development complex, which comprises new offices, a hotel, business school and flats, uses borehole heating to warm the buildings in winter and heat storage to cool the buildings in summer. The initiative is believed to be the largest of its kind in Europe and reduces electric or fossil fuel heating needs by 60-70%, substantially reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

New report says Sellafield plans a 'bodge' as operators face prosecution

One year after a series of alarming errors resulted in 18,000 litres of highly radioactive dissolved spent fuel leaking in the THORP reprocessing plant at Sellafield, Greenpeace has published a report which exposes how the current plan to reopen THORP is an 'engineering 'bodge' which risks compromising safety. The publication comes as it was revealed that the plant's operators will be prosecuted over the accident.