"No more Chernobyl disasters," Kristen Touborg MP writes in Jyllands-Posten. A member of Denmark's Socialist People's Party, Touborg is also deputy chair of the Nordic Council Environment and Natural Resources Committee. The committee visited Chernobyl and the surrounding areas of Ukraine and Belarus during the summer and the impression made by field trip has not diminished her opposition to nuclear power.
"The climate debate is being used by proponents of nuclear power as another welcome excuse to stoke the fires of a new nuclear age.
The most recent manifestation of this that I have encountered was in Iceland, at a meeting of the Nordic Council Environment Committee. On behalf of the Left-wing Socialist and Green Group, I had to reject a proposal from the Norwegian Progressive Party for a joint Nordic research and development programme for nuclear power based on thorium," Kristen Touborg wrote in the newspaper.
"The Left-wing Socialist and Green Group does not support nuclear power. Nor has there ever been any tradition of the Nordic Council interfering in individual countries' internal energy planning.
During the summer, the Environment and Natural Resources Committee visited the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Seeing the so-called 'capped' nuclear plant made a strong impression on me. It continues to live its own life encapsulated in a concrete sarcophagus, which the experts say is in need of renewal.
All the hazardous substances still constitute a major health risk to humans and I am not convinced that safety is as good as it could be.
As a result, I have requested that the Environment and Natural Resources Committee commissions a status report on the safety of the plant as well as an assessment of what contribution the Nordic countries can make to improving safety," she concluded.