In April this year I went to the Ukraine to visit the site of reactor unit number four at the Chernobyl nuclear power station. This was the site of the world’s worst nuclear power accident twenty years ago. I remembered it well – the desperate scenes on television of emergency workers flying over the wrecked reactor dropping concrete and sand on top of it to try to put out the fire. Most of them were to develop acute radiation sickness. I toured the 962 square mile exclusion area including several towns and villages which are now ghost towns – the people were moved out by fleets of buses. No one will be able to live in this area for hundreds of years. The contamination spread well beyond the immediate area and we may never know the true extent of the damage caused by Chernobyl. That is why in the EP we have been calling for a full scale independent inquiry. Because without that knowledge we can’t have an honest debate about the cost of nuclear power. The Chernobyl disaster has to be the backdrop of any debate on nuclear power. The accident that couldn’t happen – but did.

If for no other reason, Chernobyl is a chilling reminder as to why we have to have a nuclear free Wales. Nuclear power belongs to the past. It is an experiment that failed and it can have no place in our future. It’s not sustainable, it’s not cheap and it’s not safe.

But the pro nuclear lobby is very powerful. In Finland they had a scaremongering campaign to get the government to go for nuclear power. They painted a picture of freezing homes and energy dependency on Russia, as well as the need to prevent climate change and meet the country’s Kyoto targets to reduce CO2 emissions. The vote in parliament in 2002 was 200 to 107 to build a new – a fifth - nuclear power station.

There are two very interesting facts about what is happening in Finland. Firstly, that those lobbying for nuclear power swore in all the debates that it would not lead to weakening energy efficiency or renewable energy. The opposite has been the case. The promised funding to promote renewables never materialised. Secondly, a year long delay has been announced in the construction of the nuclear power station which only started last year! The reasons given by the company, Areva, is the quality of the concrete used – too porous - and the lack of detailed blueprints for many areas of the power station. This means that when the government bought the power station the plans weren’t even finished! Project management and control of sub-contractors on the site has been poor because they were chosen on the basis of cost, not experience.

So in twenty years between Chernobyl and the building of the world’s newest nuclear power station, little has actually changed – there are already worries about its safety.

But the other aspect to nuclear power that cannot be excluded from the debate is that nuclear power stations were built to provide plutonium for nuclear weapons. That was their purpose. The separation of civil and military uses is a myth.

That is why there has been such a reaction to Iran developing nuclear power – because it gives them the capacity to build nuclear weapons.

But at the same time as condemning Iran, the British government is planning new nuclear weapons of its own.

Last year in New York there was a review conference on the nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty. This treaty is not just about stopping the spread of nuclear weapons to other countries. It places an explicit legal duty on nuclear states like Britain to disarm. Britain is signed up to the treaty but is not only NOT disarming but preparing to rearm.

Britain currently has a fleet of four nuclear powered and nuclear armed submarines based at the Clyde Naval base in Faslane, Scotland – HMS Vanguard, Victorious, Vigilant and Vengeance. Each submarine carries sixteen Trident II D5 missiles, leased from the USA, and each of these carry three nuclear warheads – 48 per submarine. Each warhead is 8 times more powerful than the bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan in 1945 killing over 100,000 people. Each of the 4 submarines has the equivalent destructive capability of 384 Hiroshima bombs. One submarine is continuously on submerged patrol, probably in the Atlantic.

The Trident nuclear weapons system replaced a previous submarine-based nuclear weapon system called Polaris, which had four submarines armed with 16 US-built Polaris missiles. When the decision was taken to replace Polaris by Trident in 1980, Parliament wasn’t properly informed of either its existence or its likely costs. The first Trident submarine entered service in 1994. The fourth in 1999. Trident has a planned lifespan of approximately 30 years, and so could remain operational until around 2025.

It took 14 years from the 1980 decision to replace Polaris with Trident until the first Trident submarine entered into service, so any decision on replacing Trident should be due about now.

It has been estimated that a Trident replacement would cost more than £15 billion - the whole annual British defence budget is about £6 billion. This sum does not include the full cost of decommissioning or dealing with nuclear waste and contamination problems for Trident. So the figure is more like £25 billion. Just think how else we could spend that money.

The government actually has three options. It could extend the ‘life ‘of the existing Trident submarines, as the US has done (until 2029). It could replace the Trident with another system. Or it could decide not to replace Trident and carry out its 35-year old obligation to nuclear disarmament under Article VI of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

What are the chances for each of those options? Well, look at the evidence we have so far.

On the 4th July 2005, the Secretary of State for Defence, John Reid, said “Decisions on any replacement of the United Kingdom’s nuclear deterrent are likely to be necessary in the lifetime of the current parliament.”

And in January planning permission was given for a new super laser facility at the Atomic Weapons Establishment in Aldermaston. ORION, as it’s called, will enable new nuclear weapons to be developed and tested without the need for full scale underground bomb tests because it can simulate the effects of a thermo nuclear explosion. This laser alone undermines the aims of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. They have recruited 80 specialist scientists and invested in new laboratories and equipment.

What is the purpose of this if not to develop and test new weapons? So the signs are that once again a decision has already been made in secret while the pretence of considering the options continues.

The Labour Government dropped its ‘No First Use’ (of nuclear weapons) policy after being elected in 1997. In 2002, Geoff Hoon, then Secretary of State for Defence, said that nuclear weapons might be used not only in response to nuclear attacks, but also in response to chemical and biological weapon attacks. He also announced that a pre-emptive strike might be used against a country considered by the Government to be a sufficient threat, whether or not that country even owns nuclear weapons. This goes against previous British commitments never to use nuclear weapons first, and declarations that Trident is only a ‘minimum nuclear deterrent’.

The Labour Party Manifesto in 2005 stated, “We are also committed to retaining the independent nuclear deterrent.”

And despite the fact that there has been no debate in the House of Commons on this issue, huge sums of public money have already been spent on the developments at Aldermaston.

The government refuses to publish any of its studies and the MOD refused to participate in the Commons Select Committee on Defence inquiry in March this year which was “intended to inform public debate” on the future of Britain’s nuclear weapons.

But even without the full information a recent MORI poll showed that 54% of people in Britain oppose Trident replacement.

On 1st October this year a massive campaign of civil resistance will begin. There have been many blockades of the Trident base in Faslane and many people from Wales have taken part. This time a year long peaceful blockade is planned called Faslane 365.All kinds of organizations are being asked to bring 100 people to Faslane to stay for 48 hours. The blockade will disrupt the workings of the nuclear base. The demand is “Trident must be taken out of deployment and the government should make a timetable for dismantling the weapons, together with a commitment not to develop any new nuclear weapons”.

This is a very ambitious aim and will mean mobilizing people like never before as well as raising awareness of the threat of nuclear weapons. I will be there and I know many other people who will be there too. Wales days – 13/14 November.

We must make this an inspirational symbol like Greenham Common became twenty five years ago. That protest ultimately succeeded. This one can too.