GREENPEACE has lost its legal battle to delay the operation of THORP.
Mr Justice Potts ruled that the • government had not acted 'unreasonably and irrationally' in approving the Thermal Oxide Reprocessing Plant (THORP) without first holding a public enquiry.
A record 64,000 objections to its opening were received from the public.
This overwhelming concern was overridden by the government on the grounds that £2.85 billion had been spent building the installation and that billions of pounds of orders awaited.
THORP's purpose is to extract uranium and plutonium from radio-active waste for commercial and possibly military use while disposing of the waste itself.
However as Paul Leventhal of the Nuclear Control Institute asks, 'Who will guarantee the safety, security and peaceful use of this extraordinary material during its shelf life of hundreds of thousands of years?' Certainly the owner of the plant, British Nuclear Fuels Ltd (BNFL), can't be trusted when Socialist they have placed profit margins above the health and safety of their work-force and the residents of Sellafield in Cumbria, where THORP is located.
On top of the high incidence of leukaemia among children in the region, one study estimates 600 deaths from cancer worldwide within the first ten years of the plant's operation.
Waste to be reprocessed would be transported across great distances increasing the risk that these consignments could be highjacked by terrorists or leak out and contaminate vast areas.
Although the domestic nuclear industry will be a major customer, so will countries like Germany, Japan and Switzer*land. Many western European countries with high environmental standards and vocal green movements are dumping waste they can't or won't store themselves, on Britain.
The British government seems quite willing to make Britain a nuclear dustbin.
As long as science is unable to treat nuclear waste and its presence is a hazard to lives and livelihoods, nuclear power is an unacceptable source of energy.
Meanwhile the traditional alternatives like oil, gas and coal are themselves major sources of pollution. They contribute to global warming and acid rain.
The £1 billion subsidy the government gives the nuclear industry annually should be used instead to fund research into renewable and clean forms of energy.
The campaign to shut down THORP often saw trade unions and environmental groups at loggerheads.
Trade union officials were actively supporting BNFL to protect the 5,000 jobs that would be created at Sellafield. But at what price do they accept this?
Meanwhile the green lobby who were denounced as 'ecofundamentalists' must take seriously the consequences on communities of mass unemployment.
Both camps must bury the hatchet and start talking to each other. We need to combine each other's skills to begin the conversion of these industries to socially useful ends.
As for THORP, people in the countries which are exporting waste to Britain have begun campaigning for the cancellation of these orders. That would defeat the economic rationale for the plant's operation.
We haven't lost the battle to close THORP; we've only just begun.
Further information Kingsland High Street, London, E8
Protest outside
the 1994 British Aerospace AGM IN SPITE of 200,000 killed in East Timor British Aerospace (BAe) continue to sell Hawk ground attack aircraft to Indonesia.
Since the invasion of East Timor in 1975 one third of the population have been killed. The UN have voted that the occupation is illegal.
Despite evidence that previous Hawks sold have been used against the civilian population in East Timor in 1993 BAe accepted an order for another 24. The Hawks are due for delivery in 1996.
The Campaign Against the Arms Trade will be launching its Alternative Shareholders Report, which will argue for conversion and highlight the results of BAe's sales of military equipment.
Join the protest outside the AGM, 12 noon, April 26, Grosvenor Square, London.
we can stop the Hawks