286
4.
5.
HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL
What plans have they made to replace our food and water should there be major radioactive contamination caused by an accident at Daya Bay?
What plans have they made for full scale evacuation of the Hong Kong population should there be a major accident at Daya Bay?
Mr. Chairman, I believe that this matter is so serious that it requires a public enquiry.'
None of the questions I then asked were answered and, of course, the call for a public enquiry was completely ignored.
And guess who was sitting next to me while I was making that speech? EXCO and LEGCO Member Ms. Maria TAM! Enough said.
What really annoys me about this period AC is not that the same people whom I warned three years ago about the problems which Daya Bay presented and who then paid no attention whatsoever are now climbing on the bandwagon and are making judgements without any basic knowledge, but that these same people when one talks to them about pollution pay no attention whatsoever because controlling pollution could be expensive, could look bad with their constituents, and anyhow is not very important! And yet, the health risks posed by our present already existing air and water pollution are just as serious as risks posed by nuclear power stations.
Incidentally, I think Daya Bay has laid to rest the canard that Hong Kong people are politically naive and can therefore not be trusted to run their own Government. Because our politicians, high and low, in the Councils, and out of the Councils, have shown that they are as sophisticated as any in the world and know how to climb on a bandwagon when they see one, and also already know how to spend the taxpayer's money on glorifying junkets.
When I made my trips to the nuclear power stations in Europe four years ago and learned about the emergency procedures, including evacuation plans, for surrounding areas devised by the French, and especially how their international warning system works, it frightened the daylights out of me because at the largest collection of PWR's in the world sited as already mentioned between Calais and Dunkirk, only 50 km from Dover and from large Belgium population centres, the procedures there, if something were to go wrong, would be that a notification of the accident would first of all go to the Prefecture in Lille on the 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 realized 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.
Page 164 of 201
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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 pulverized 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 consensus now emerging that there seems no reasonable doubt that the world is getting warmer and will continue to do so through the carbon dioxide 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 on agriculture with consequent possibilities of starvation of millions and millions of people. It is therefore quite essential that the burning of fossil fuels is contained and reduced drastically. This is one of the main reasons why it is essential to develop alternate methods of
286
4.
5.
HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL
What plans have they made to replace our food and water should there be major radioactive contamination caused by an accident at Daya Bay?
What plans have they made for full scale evacuation of the Hong Kong population should there be a major accident at Daya Bay?
Mr. Chairman, I believe that this matter is so serious that it requires a public enquiry.'
None of the questions I then asked were answered and, of course, the call for a public enquiry was completely ignored.
And guess who was sitting next to me while I was making that speech? EXCO and LEGCO Member Ms. Maria TAM! Enough said.
What really annoys me about this period AC is not that the same people whom I warned three years ago about the problems which Daya Bay presented and who then paid no attention whatsoever are now climbing on the bandwagon and are making judgements without any basic knowledge, but that these same people when one talks to them about pollution pay no attention whatsoever because controlling pollution could be expensive, could look bad with their constituents, and anyhow is not very important! And yet, the health risks posed by our present already existing air and water pollution are just as serious as risks posed by nuclear power stations.
Incidentally, I think Daya Bay has laid to rest the canard that Hong Kong people are politically naive and can therefore not be trusted to run their own Government. Because our politicians, high and low, in the Councils, and out of the Councils, have shown that they are as sophisticated as any in the world and know how to climb on a bandwagon when they see one, and also already know how to spend the taxpayer's money on glorifying junkets.
When I made my trips to the nuclear power stations in Europe four years ago and learned about the emergency procedures, including evacuation plans, for surrounding areas devised by the French, and especially how their international warning system works, it frightened the daylights out of me because at the largest collection of PWR's in the world sited as already mentioned between Calais and Dunkirk, only 50 km from Dover and from large Belgium population centres, the procedures there, if something were to go wrong, would be that a notification of the accident would first of all go to the Prefecture in Lille on the 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 realized 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
HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL
Page 164 of 201
287
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 pulverized 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 on agriculture with consequent possibilities of starvation of millions and millions of people. It is therefore quite essential that the burning of fossil fuels is contained and reduced drastically. This is one of the main reasons why it is essential to develop alternate methods of
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