Letter: Reactions to current nuclear issues

TOM WILKIE is a little hard on the Government when he accuses it of dithering over the Thermal Oxide Reprocessing Plant, Thorp, ('Nuclear plant faces long delay', 13 June). The delay perhaps indicates profound concern about the negative implications of Thorp, rather than worries about legal action by objectors. The Government must be alarmed that there is no need for the plant; that the increase in lethal radioactive discharges cannot be justified; that its product, plutonium, adds to fears of weapons proliferation; that its wastes will present an intractable disposal problem; and that its future costs are so uncertain that any hoped-for profits look very risky.

What is surely taking time is not the decision to open the plant, but the decision to abandon it.

Anand Zenz

London SW9