Resources: Energy

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Democracy in a Plutonium Economy
Frank Barnaby

2 November 1997

Plutonium is a radioactive by-product of nuclear reactors and one of the most toxic substances known. The nuclear industry argues that it should be mixed with uranium oxide and used in ordinary nuclear reactors as mixed-oxide or MOX fuel elements. Yet this would produce more plutonium; cost more than conventional nuclear fuel; be less safe; increase the risk of serious accidents during transportation; necessitate extreme high security to prevent theft; and increase the risk of nuclear weapon proliferation by countries and terrorist organisations.

A February 2004 Sunday Times article alleged that BP knew about safety faults with its anti-corrosion sealant coating for its Caspian oil pipeline, but did not disclose them when trying to secure funding from publicly-funded export credit agencies and multilateral development banks. A UK government minister and officials from the UK's export credit agency gave public assurances that the coating had been used extensively elsewhere on similar pipelines, but subsequently-released documents indicate that it had not.

Between 2002 and 2005, The Corner House and its partners conducted fact-finding missions to areas along the route of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) oil pipeline to gather information about community expectations and opinions, impacts, and the consultation and land expropriation process carried out by the BTC consortium (led by British oil multinational BP) building the pipeline.