Dear friends
We want to bring to your notice that trains carrying highly radioactive nuclear fuel rods removed from nuclear power stations pass regularly through the main site of the Olympic Games 2012 in East London.
If the casing housing the rods were breached, high-level radiation would be released, which nuclear scientists have calculated would cause thousands of deaths downwind in a built-up area such as East London, and require mass evacuation.
In our view these trains could therefore constitute a highly desirable target for terrorists wishing to cause a spectacular outrage during the Games.
We have tried to get the British Government, the Greater London Authority and the UK Olympic Delivery Authority to state whether, under these circumstances, these trains would be stopped during the Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2012. They have refused to answer this question.
We are writing to ask you to consider contacting your Government and your country’s Olympic Committee to alert them to this situation and to ask them to bring pressure on the British government and the UK Olympic Delivery Authority to give an undertaking that these trains will not run through or near the Olympic site during the period of the Games.
See our website – address at top - for further information and do get back to us if you have any further queries.
Best wishes
David Polden.
(Nuclear Trains Action Group.)
NUCLEAR TRAINS ACTION GROUP
London Region CND
Mordechai Vanunu House, 162 Holloway Road, London N7 8DQ; 020-7607 2302
fax c/o 020-7700 2357; e-mail david.lrcnd@cnduk.org web www.nonucleartrains.org.uk