COUNCILLORS IN WATERFORD have agreed to contact the Irish and British governments directly over plans to build a new nuclear power plant just 240km from the south-east coastline, at Hinkley Point.
The project — a £16 billion development by the British government and French energy company EDF – is set to go ahead after it received the backing of the EU this week.
It would be the first new British nuclear plant in almost 20 years.
The construction plan had come under fire from activists, who criticised the building of a nuclear plant at a site that already has two energy stations.
The matter was raised under ‘urgent business’ at a meeting of Waterford councillors last night, and all members present agreed the matter should be taken up with Dublin and London.
The local authority intends to write to our own Department of the Environment and either the UK Ambassador or the Home Secretary, Tramore-based Independent Councillor Joe Conway said.
The councillors felt they had to express their dissatisfaction with the plan for “our own self-respect,” the councillor said.
He added:
We’re under no illusions — fine body of men and women that we are — that we’re going to alter the mindset of David Cameron or the British Cabinet.
He complained that there hadn’t been a “whimper from our own government” on the issue.
Anger
The construction plan has attracted the ire of a number of critics, with Greenpeace calling it a “sell-out to the nuclear industry”.
Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann said his government would “prepare and file a complaint at the European Court of Justice” to fight the greenlit project.
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