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UK to suspend nuclear trains during London Olympics

IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency

London, July 27, IRNA -- The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) has welcomed the British government’s decision to suspend trains carrying highly radioactive nuclear waste during next year's Olympics but warns that risks to the people of London will resume after the games.

'We welcome this temporary suspension, but resuming these deadly shipments after the Games is no solution,” said CND general secretary Kate Hudson.

“These trains routinely put Londoners at risk, with hazards from potential accidents as well as terrorism. Even ahead of the Games, moving the necessary ingredients for a 'dirty bomb' through the site is a risk just not worth taking,” Hudson said.

Operator of the trains which normally pass through the Olympic Park in east London, Direct Rail Services, a company wholly owned by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, has claimed the suspension is not security-related but to free up track space.

Whilst extra services are due to run on the Great Eastern Main Line which approaches Stratford from the north-east, CND said it has seen no evidence that extra Olympic services are to be run on the North London Line which connects the Olympic Park to inner north London.

Hudson also criticised government plans for two new nuclear plants in the South East which she said would mean “decades more of these toxic cargoes passing within metres of houses, schools and hospitals.”

“The consequences of an incident involving the highly radioactive spent fuel rods on these trains could affect hundreds of thousands of people. This is yet another reason why dirty, dangerous and expensive nuclear power is not the answer to climate change,' she said.

The risks to the trains have been highlighted a number of times, including back in 2006, when a Daily Mirror journalist planted a fake bomb on a nuclear waste train that stopped in a London depot to show how vulnerable the trains are to a terrorist attack.