Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2011-03-23-Speech-3-140-000"
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"en.20110323.18.3-140-000"2
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".
Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, of course this situation requires that we should assist Japan as best we can and with all the resources at our disposal. A country hit by the kind of disaster that has hit Japan needs all the help it can get. However, I find remarkable the levity with which we heap praise on Japan’s heroes. I believe that we are failing to recognise that the people referred to as ‘heroes’ know better than anyone else that they are risking life and limb and that many of those who are fighting the nuclear meltdown in Fukushima are already dead men walking. The Japanese know better than any other nation in the world what devastation a nuclear disaster can unleash. Their history is dominated by Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Every child in Japan is aware of the consequences of nuclear meltdown. We should be aware of this when we come to discuss Japan. The Japanese know better than anyone else all the horror entailed not just in this situation, but also in what is yet to come. Perhaps the Ukrainians, who have witnessed the devastation of part of their country for the last 25 years, are the only others qualified to speak about this.
For me, current European discussions, unlike those of 25 years ago, should consider the political implications when we discover that in our own countries we have a technology that can get out of control, not just annihilating the past in certain regions or destroying the present, but also reaching insidiously into the future of all those living in the vicinity of these plants, as well as in the wider environs. I do not believe that we are doing this when we talk about stress tests, Mr Oettinger. We must be much more honest and should admit that we in the European Union have frequently been confronted with situations verging on nuclear meltdown in the plants that we operate. Let me give you a short list: Tihange in Belgium, Civaux in France, Philippsburg in Germany, Kozloduy in Bulgaria, Paks in Hungary, Brunsbüttel in Germany, where there was a hydrogen explosion, Forsmark in Sweden, Barsebäck in Sweden, Blayais in France, Krümmel in Germany – this is a list of the most striking incidents that have occurred, with a range of different causes, since Chernobyl, where we have found ourselves on the threshold of nuclear meltdown.
How are we to deal with the fact that a nuclear meltdown could occur in any of the plants that we operate? Are we to do this through stress tests? In my opinion, these tests are only relevant if they lead us to produce a plan indicating which plants and which defined risks are to be the first to go as we turn our backs on this high-risk technology. If these stress tests are intended to reassure the public and once again to suggest that we in Europe could never be faced with situations like those currently experienced in Japan, then I believe that these tests are wrong. By the way, we would very much welcome the opportunity to have a say in deciding who defines the stress tests – this matter cannot be left to the nuclear power plant operators themselves – as well as who implements the tests and evaluates them. The hitherto responsible authorities have turned a blind eye far too often to the difficulties encountered in European plants and have approved plants that never should have passed the conformity assessment procedure, as Euratom did in the cases of Belene and Mochovce, for example."@en1
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