International

The European Parliament today debated the EU's nuclear technology research programme. According to SP Euro-MP Kartika Liotard this is no more than an attempt to pull the wool over the eys of the member states' citizens. “Nuclear power is presented as the solution to the problem of climate change and the most important ‘clean’ energy source in Europe. Total nonsense!”

“The amount of money that the EU wants to spend on nuclear research has grown out of all proportion,” Ms Liotard said. “We should be putting extra effort into the search for reliable, safe and clean energy instead of gambling everything on nuclear fission or even nuclear fusion.” Expectations of the latter are much too high. “With the research programme over which the European Parliament must decide tomorrow, the fifty years which we are told we must wait before nuclear fusion becomes practicable will be reduced to thirty. But that's not a realistic option, because thirty years will be too late, and that's assuming that fusion will ever become a usable form of energy production.”

In the SP's view, this programme will mean that Europe will miss a real opportunity. “Less than 15 percent of European energy comes from nuclear power stations,” Liotard said, “and most of that is in France. But the importance of this energy source in the report on which we must vote – the Buzek report – is grossly exaggerated. Many times more money should be spent on nuclear research in the coming months than on real alternatives, the report argues, which I find outrageous. Nuclear power has scarcely proved profitable in all the time since it was first introduced and we are no nearer to finding a solution to the problem of waste than we were then. This report must be thrown out, because it's simply stringing the public along. The need for energy is great, and that is a problem which demands a bold solution, not the churning out of the same old nuclear tune.”