The private multinational corporation that owns the nuclear dockyard at Plymouth Devonport are seeking to build a new facility there to create and store nuclear waste – in the middle of a City of 250,000 people. The waste will come from sawing-up nuclear-powered submarines such as HMS Conqueror that sank the Argentinian destroyer, Belgrano, with a loss of 1500 lives of young conscripted sailors. This will add to the waste already accumulated from the current Vanguard Class nuclear powered submarines that carry the Trident nuclear weapon, with each warhead carrying nine separate nuclear bombs larger than the size of the bomb that destroyed the Japanese City of Hiroshima in 1945.
Sawing-up and storing this nuclear contamination will earn Babcock Marine hundreds of millions of pounds each year until at least 2046. Tax payers money that could be put to use building safe and clean energy turbines run by wave or wind, using most of the same state-of-the-art engineering equipment already installed at Plymouth Dockyard at the tax-payers expense.
Climate Change is a great threat to us all. That’s why we must have Green Jobs for a sustainable future. Trident nuclear weapons and the nuclear-powered fleet that carry them are of no value to anyone but the armaments industry, and are costing the earth. The £76 billion (£76,000,000,000) it will cost for a new generation of Trident nuclear warheads could pay for the reduction of UK CO2 emissions.
Nuclear waste is stored at the Dockyard within 400 feet of the closest infants school, which has a special alarm in case of nuclear accident, warning children to shut windows and doors and stay inside, and warning parents to stay at home and not collect their children for fear of contamination. Now this nuclear waste is to be added to and built upon for possible the next 300 years – they have no idea what to do with it!
Any nuclear accident will contaminate not only the River Tamar and the whole of Plymouth, but a northerly wind will ensure the whole of Dartmoor and Exeter is contaminated, and a Westerly will cover the whole of Cornwall. This is a regional issue, and must be of national concern.
That is why the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, the Plymouth-based Nuclear Free Coalition of environmental groups, and the Plymouth Trades Union Council have joined together to call a national demonstration on Saturday 31st October in Plymouth, supported by the Campaign against Climate Change and the Stop the War Coalition locally.
We desperately need your help and support. Please:
· Send out the leaflets everywhere.· Organise collective transport to Plymouth.
· Book-in to our workshops and overnight dormitary stay on Friday 30th October at the Quaker Meeting House, Mutley Plain, Plymouth.
· Send us a donation to help with the costs of the day.
· Let us know we have your support.
With thanks and in solidarity, Plymouth CND
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