press releases

Commenting on the Government's announcement this morning of a £10 million pound loan to British Energy, Greenpeace campaigner Matthew Spencer said,
"This is another misuse of taxpayers' money which has more to do with protecting political careers than keeping the lights on. If the Government is serious about protecting the safety and security of the company's nuclear power stations it must make any loans conditional on the closure of those plants."

He continued,

Is British Energy putting cash before safety?

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.

New briefing reveals major problems with British Energy rescue proposals

Seventy two percent of the British public favour funding of wind power over the nuclear industry according to a MORI poll funded by Greenpeace [1]. The results lend weight to calls for the Government to reject special pleading by British Energy for a cash bailout and instead respond to calls from the renewable energy industry for comparable investments in offshore wind farms and domestic solar power.

New figures released today show that the boycott of Esso petrol is hitting the oil giant at the pump. The news comes as the company stands accused of sabotaging a deal at the Earth Summit to deliver renewable energy to the world's poorest regions.

Polling by MORI Social Research Institute shows the number of petrol buyers who say they regularly buy their petrol from Esso has fallen by around a quarter in a year, while more than one million motorists say they are boycotting Esso because of their stance on global warming.

British Nuclear Fuel's (BNFL) controversial plutonium fuel programme (MOX) suffered another blow when Japan's largest nuclear utility announced last night (29/8/02) that there has been a major safety scandal at its nuclear power plants. Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), the world's third largest nuclear power operator is a key potential customer of BNFL's MOX fuel manufactured at its plant at Sellafield, Cumbria.

Greenpeace today called on the U.S. State Department to arrest and extradite international fugitive and Bhopal corporate criminal Warren Anderson, after he was found by a UK newspaper and Greenpeace living a life of luxury in New York State. Anderson, the former Chief Executive Officer of Union Carbide, has been hiding in the United States since an explosion at his company's plant in Bhopal, India, caused the worst industrial disaster in history in December 1984.

Greenpeace has asked Tony Blair today (27/08/02) to not bother making a speech at the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) unless his address shows world leadership and commits the UK to real action. The summit starts this week in Johannesburg, South Africa. Greenpeace has identified two obvious examples where earlier Blair rhetoric has been discredited by official sloth and offered a checklist of four concrete achievements that the Prime Minister could instead deliver within the next two weeks.

Confidential government documents obtained by Greenpeace and published today reveal that the Home Office is insisting on an air conditioning system for its luxurious new offices that other ministers have lambasted because of the damage it causes to the environment.

The Home Office has told companies bidding to provide the new system that it only wants one using HFCs (hydrofluorocarbons) - chemicals that the government says 'should be avoided' because they are 'many times more powerful than carbon dioxide' in causing global warming.

Greenpeace last night attached a large compressed air banner to the harbour wall outside the military port of Barrow-in-Furness and this morning inflated the remote-controlled device. 

Greenpeace has caught up with a deadly cargo of plutonium off South African waters and mounted a high-seas protest, just days before the start of the Earth Summit in Johannesburg.

Despite attempts by the two armed vessels to evade public scrutiny by altering course, the Greenpeace ship, MV Esperanza, located them late Sunday night and radioed an intention to peacefully protest, but received no reply.