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Legal battles threaten nuclear power programme

9 January 2008

The return of nuclear power is not going to be smooth. Governments in the UK and US are bracing themselves for legal battles that could hamper their plans to generate more electricity from nuclear reactors.

The UK government’s nuclear programme – expected to be announced this week – has come in for heavy criticism in a report by 17 academics. Public consultations relied on “preordained solutions based on problematic information”, says lead author Paul Dorfman of the University of Warwick. “The government has an insufficient democratic mandate for nuclear new build in the UK.” Greenpeace, which took legal action last year to force the government to…

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