nuclear-news

Local community against nuclear power, as Poland’s government launches pro nuclear campaign

“People are very determined not to have the nuclear plant here,”

Poland’s centrist government plans to launch a pro-nuclear public campaign in March,….

Polish sea resort poll rejects nuclear plant  
 
* Some 94 percent of local community opposed to nuclear plant

* Warsaw says will consider the decision

By Maciej Onoszko MIELNO, Poland, Feb 13 (Reuters) – Residents of popular Baltic Sea resort Mielno, one of three sites shortlisted to host Poland’s first nuclear plant early in the next decade, on Sunday voted overwhelmingly against the plan.

Some 94 percent of the 2,389 people who took part in the referendum opposed the plant, and only 5 percent supported it, Mielno Mayor Olga Roszak-Pezala told Reuters…

The village of Gaski in the Mielno municipality is one of three sites selected by Polish power company PGE last November to host a power station with a capacity of 3 gigawatts, which is set to double in the 2030s.

The emergence of Gaski on the PGE shortlist caught local authorities and citizens by surprise, with some 90 percent of them earning their living from tourism, Roszak-Pezala said.

“People are very determined not to have the nuclear plant here,” she
told Reuters.

On the day of the ballot, many buildings in Mielno were placarded with
‘vote no’ posters. Some participants of a polar bear plunge, an event
taking place simultaneously in Mielno over the weekend, also protested
against nuclear power…..
Poland’s centrist government plans to launch a pro-nuclear public
campaign in March,….
Westinghouse, a U.S.-based unit of Japan’s Toshiba, France’s Areva and
the Japanese-American group GE Hitachi are competing to supply
technology for the project, estimated to cost up to 21 billion euros
($27.7 billion).

Two other shortlisted sites, Choczewo and Zarnowiec, also located in
northern Poland on the sea, have not held referendums.

Formally, PGE could start the project without the consent of the local
community, but Mielno authorities said the ballot result was a clear
signal that PGE should seek a site elsewhere. “A referendum is the
highest form of social consultation,” the head of Mielno’s municipal
council, Krzysztof Chadacz, told Reuters. “If PGE does not back out,
we will launch any democratically available form of protest, including
legal action and appeal to the European Court of Justice.” ($1 =
0.7582 euros)    ($1 = 3.1756 Polish zlotys)     (Additional reporting by
Agnieszka Barteczko, writing by Gabriela Baczynska, editing by Jason
Neely and Jane Baird)

February 14, 2012 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | EUROPE, opposition to nuclear