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   Web Issue 3198 July 20 2008   
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‘Thousands of jobs’ in nuclear design licences

Thousands of extra jobs could be created if designs for a new generation of nuclear power stations in the UK could be used around the world, a trade union claims.

Unite wants the government and the nuclear regulator to license "global designs", set at an international standard, for the new sites in this country.

As well as securing thousands of existing jobs in the nuclear industry, 10,000 new jobs could be created, said national officer Dougie Rooney, who added: "The licensing of a new generation of UK nuclear reactors provides British industry with a fantastic opportunity to say to the world and to the UK population that we are applying the highest global standards.

"It also sends a powerful message to the commercial world and to UK industry that it is safe for it to invest in new facilities, new product designs, training and jobs."


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Posted by: Scott2006, Outside Glasgow on 5:47pm Wed 26 Mar 08
No one can deny that 10,000 new jobs would be good for the short term economic benefit of the whole economy. Where jobs in the nuclear industry are needed in the long term are in robotic devices to interact in the areas of the plant where exposure to levels of radiation damaging over the long term to workers exposed to such risks.

The long half-lives of isotopes of chemicals produced by nuclear fission (eg Uranium235, 2.48 x 10^5 years) involves a trade off between benefits to a constant supply of energy as demand grows over time against the unknown safety and satisfactory decommissioning that the current fission plants expected to come off line in the next decade or two. Can we really allow a 40 year working life that leaves a legacy of gamma radiation on such a long time scale for 100,000s of years?
The benefits of investment into nuclear fusion research is expected to yield a greater benefit with material producing half-lifes of radio-active isotopes of (Hydrogen3, 12.26years) material safe in a very much shorter timescale. The capacity for cheap fusion is perhaps 30 to 40 years away - but the radiation levels will be safe in a hundred years while fission waste will be a problem a thousand times longer.
Human safety and environmental concerns need to be assured which fission power doesn't sufficiently address.
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