On a visit to Sellafield union leader urges the government to push
ahead with nuclear energy
22 January 2009
While meeting workers at Sellafield today (22nd January), Derek
Simpson, the joint leader of Unite, will urge the Government to
push ahead with the nuclear rebuild programme to reduce Britain's
household bills, create jobs and end our reliance on oil and gas
from countries like Russia.
Mr Simpson will welcome the Government's commitment to nuclear
energy as a key part of its low carbon and secure energy
policy.
Unite's Joint General Secretary, Derek Simpson will say: Pushing
ahead with Britain's nuclear new build addresses the real concerns
of real life people. They want cheaper household bills.
"Building a new generation of nuclear power stations and clean
coal-fired power stations will create 10,000 jobs in manufacturing
in the UK. Nuclear energy can reduce our reliance on foreign gas
and oil, and start to reduce household bills by 2015. It won’t be
popular with the Russians, or the French or the even the Greens but
they don’t vote Labour."
Unite is campaigning to ensure the UK's manufacturing
industry carries out the majority of the work associated with any
new nuclear reactors to be built in the UK. The union fears that
the UK's dependency on imported oil and gas from Russia will be
replaced by a dependency on France to supply our nuclear
technology.
The union also supports clean coal and carbon capture
technologies and is calling for financial support in terms of
research and development. Again, the UK manufacturing industry in
the UK must be fully involved in this work programme.
The Government's support for a new generation of nuclear
power stations and the increasing significance of renewable
technology means there will be huge demands for people with craft
and technical engineering skills. There are major projects taking
place over the next 20 years starting with the refurbishment of
Aldermaston, the building of clean coal power stations and carbon
capture projects and nuclear decommissioning at Sellafield and
Dounreay.
Unite backed the government's recent announcement to expand
apprenticeships with an extra £140 million being made available to
fund an expansion of 35,000 apprenticeship places in 2009-10.
Mr Simpson continued: "The workers at Sellafield are highly
skilled. These are the sorts of jobs that we need to nurture
in the UK. We must encourage our young people into engineering
disciplines and also offer adults who may have missed an
opportunity earlier in their lives to come into engineering and
undertake apprenticeship training."
ENDS
Contact Ciaran Naidoo on 07768 931 315 or Richard O'Brien on 07768
931 320 to arrange an interview with Mr Simpson.
