TNAG-1505-FCO40-2063-Guangdong-nuclear-power-station-project-at-Daya-Bay-safety-c-1986 — Page 157

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one hand and the Ministry of Power in Paris on the other. The Ministry of Power would then notify the Ministry of Health, and the Ministry of Health if it considered it necessary would notify the Foreign Ministry, and the Foreign Ministry if it considered it necessary would then notify the Ambassador of the country concerned! I reckoned then three days might be lost and lo and behold it took the Soviets three days to notify the Chernobyl accident to the outside world! When I was told about this slow notification process I realised that we must be able to find out ourselves if there is an accident at Daya Bay, just as the Swedes did when they notified the world about Chernobyl. Hence my constant pushing of the Government towards far more and better monitoring than is so far envisaged. Of course, after 1997 we won't have to go through such a rigmarole, but one wonders whether with the red tape which is extant in China today, notifications of accidents, even if the management admits to them in the first place, would be made promptly or would be delayed in bureaucratic channels.

Anyhow, what I object to is that these people who are now screaming their heads off about Daya Bay, when what they should have been doing was opposing it when it first came up for discussion, do absolutely nothing about our environmental pollution. And let me say again: The real problem about Daya Bay is that we need the power and if we do not have Daya Bay then the power which will eventually be supplied from Daya Bay to Hong Kong would have to be produced in Hong Kong by a coal fired power station and that would mean that our air pollution load would go over the top, not to mention the problem of disposal of pulverised fly-ash or the rest of the ash. We cannot, under any circumstances, handle another coal, oil or gas fired power station in Hong Kong. It is already bad enough that another, although small, coal fired power station is being built now on the Chinese side within sight of the Castle Peak power stations, which will add considerably to our pollution load. And our sister city Canton has far greater problems than we have and for them it would be even worse if a coal or oil or gas fired power station were built somewhere between here and there.

Also, suggestions now being made, especially by the oil companies who have a vested interest, of turning Daya Bay into a gas, oil or coal fired power station are economically very shortsighted. I don't think there can be any doubt that the current low energy prices are a very temporary phenomenon and that seven or eight years from now when the Daya Bay Power Station would come on stream we would be locked into a very expensive fuel and therefore very expensive electricity. So I think this option is an unacceptable economic gamble quite apart from the fact that it is completely unacceptable when considering the pollution aspect, especially because of the eastward siting of Daya Bay in relation to Hong Kong.

But most important of all is the scientific concensus now emerging that there seems no reasonable doubt that the world is getting warmer and will continue to do so through the carbondioxide greenhouse effect caused almost entirely by the burning of fossil fuels whether they be coal, oil or gas. Possible results of these warming effects are catastrophes by the middle of the next century much greater than anything that we might expect from nuclear power. Among other things, the melting of the ice caps and the consequent raising of the ocean levels will mean the evacuation of practically every large port city in the world, including also Hong Kong, and major effects