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there would of course be equally serious implications for UK/China relations, since HMG has lobbied strongly and successfully for a large UK component in the project, and for our cooperation with the French Government over the project.
9.
The direct implications for the UK nuclear power
programme would also be serious. NED point out
out that any move by the British Government to identify with a Hong kong request to the Chinese to move Daya Bay or to convert it into a thermal plant would inevitably be seized on by the anti-nuclear movement as evidence of a more general lack of confidence in the safety of nuclear power. Were it possible to draw a convincing border line between Chinese and UK practice on the siting of power stations so as to
enable us to argue that we would never allow a "Daya Bay/Hong Kong" situation to
to arise in the UK this danger might be containable. But there are obvious difficulties.
A number of British nuclear power stations are roughly as close to ma jor centres of population as Daya Bay
Bay is to Hong kong (eg Heysham to Liverpool and Bradwell to
London).
And while it is true that Londoners and
Liverpudlians would have a greater choice of places to
which to flee in a nuclear emergency it is far from certain that in the present not entirely rational state of public opnion on nuclear matters in the UK this argument carry full conviction. The questions would in any
case be posed why in the circumstances the British
Government had not made representations to China at an
early stage. At the very least an additional rod would be created for belabouring the Government's nuclear policy.
would
10.
At present this scenario is a hypothetical one, and I
do not think
think that it need be addressed in detail in the
Secretary of State's minute. How HMG would have to respond
in such circumstances is difficult to predict. But the minimum needed for
to demonstrate that we were
HMG
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