Work No. 781; " Danger’ness B ". In the Service and the Pay of Aliens
In the Service and in the Pay of Aliens; ” Danger-ness B “
c. Michael St.Mark 2015
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Workers’ car park, Dungerness nuclear power station, Kent.
The energy cake worth the taxpayer-funded candle?
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Beset by expensive major design flaws and frequent safety closures since its opening in the 1970s, safety margins on the graphite core in Dungerness B were just last year given the go-ahead by the Office for Nuclear Regulation ( The Government, effectively ) to be increased by a whopping 30%, on the request of the French company EDF, in order to extend the life of the reactor ( & their massive risk-free profits ) until 2023; ostensibly to fill the expected gap in UK energy supply after 2018 until the new generation of nuclear plower plants are expected to come on-grid.
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However, concerns are growing about the unsettling similarity to safety compromises ordered at Sellafield ( then Windscale ) nuclear plant in Cumbria in the 1950s that resulted in a radioactive fire that burned uncontrolled for three days, releasing massive amounts of airborne nuclear contamination and fallout across the UK and Europe ( covered-up at the time ) and which came close to triggering a catastrophic Fukushima type explosion.
Political expediency before public safety yet again?
Danger at Dungerness article here
Windscale fire info
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Linkback to related Work, from 2011; A Hundred Thousand Years