Carl Clowes looks back at the life of one of Wales’s leading anti-nuclear campaigners
Hugh Richards, ardent anti-nuclear activist and one of the founders of the Welsh Anti-Nuclear Alliance (WANA) has died aged 65. He was a leading member of the Nuclear Consultation Group comprising many of leading UK experts in the fields of environmental risk, radiation waste, energy policy, energy economics and democratic involvement. In this capacity he was involved in advising the Welsh Government on its planning role in relation to the proposed renewal of the nuclear reactor at Wylfa on Anglesey, persuading Environment Minister Jane Davidson to support a public inquiry.
Born in Cardiff, Hugh Richards trained both as an architect (gaining a first class degree) and a town planner. Following a period working in Liverpool and London, he moved back to Wales with his wife Mag to start a family and live a more sustainable lifestyle.
This move coincided with the first big UK set piece nuclear public inquiry at Windscale and soon Hugh became embroiled in opposition to nuclear power. He campaigned against proposals to dump nuclear waste in mid-Wales and, by the end of the 1980s, was central in the campaigns to establish Cymdeithas Atal Dinistr Niwclear Oesol (CADNO) in Meirionnydd and People Against Wylfa-B/Pobl Atal Wylfa B (PAWB) in Ynys Mon, both instrumental in fighting plans to develop new nuclear power stations.
Frustrated with the amount of time he could spend in campaigning, Hugh reversed roles with Mag and became primarily a house father whilst, at the same time, establishing a private practice as a planning and design consultant. Indeed, he designed the home where Billy and Tom, his two sons with severe learning disabilities live as part of the Ashfield Community Enterprise, a centre based on sustainable principles.
In 1992, he was a candidate for the Green Party in the Brecon and Radnor constituency, fighting for the rights of people with learning disabilities as well as on environmental issues.
In recent years, Hugh’s work on nuclear waste and spent fuel management was highly valued. He showed that the new generation of reactors, in using high burn-up fuel as proposed by Westinghouse and Areva, create a waste which is typically hotter and longer-lived than existing reactors. He argued passionately that the use of such fuel would make the plants “more vulnerable to terrorists” as it would need to be stored on-site for up to 160 years. In a short paper in 2007 – “Storing up Trouble” – he noted that 30 years after start-up of the proposed Westinghouse AP-1000, the radioactive inventory would be “approximately 22 times that released by Chernobyl”.
It was this work that led Jane Davidson, the Environment Minister in Wales, to support WANA’s call for an inquiry into the proposed nuclear new build at Wylfa, because the case for new build had not been “legally justified” and there was no credible solution in relation to nuclear waste. Hugh published an article revealing the Welsh Government’s uneasiness about the next generation of nuclear reactors in the Winter 2009 issue of the IWA’s journal Agenda, which is re-published by clickonwales today alongside this obituary. In a letter in August last year to Hugh, responding to his call for a public inquiry, Jane Davidson said:
“You will be aware that the Department of Energy and Climate Change has recently consulted on an application by the Nuclear Industry Association for EU regulatory justification of new nuclear reactor designs in the UK. I have carefully considered the points raised in that consultation and other matters and I have written to the DECC Minister supporting a public inquiry for the proposed new nuclear reactors on the grounds of concerns over the safety and security of the management of future radioactive waste.”
Hugh had a capacity to produce papers which were a persuasive mix of scientific analysis and effective communication. Indeed, as recently as 18 June, he completed a coruscating critique of Government plans to manage nuclear waste by a fixed unit price (FUP), concluding “the case for the government and taxpayer taking on any risk for the waste and disposal costs has not been made. The whole idea of a FUP is deeply flawed and flaunts International Atomic Energy Agency guidance on mechanisms for financing the safe management of spent fuel.”
In a telephone conversation just before he died Hugh was as convinced as ever that the nuclear ambitions of Horizon and EDF were wholly unsustainable environmentally, economically and morally. “Hold your nerve. We shall prevail,” were his final sentiments.
A group of Hugh’s campaigning colleagues wrote to him shortly before he died “your legacy may well have a long half-life”. Indeed it will! A lecture is to be established in Hugh’s name to honour the work he did.
Hugh Richards was a wonderful and tireless campaigner. He could explain complex technology or planning issues in simple terms with the greatest clarity, and his research papers have been a key tool in opposing nuclear new build. He will be much missed.
I didn’t know Hugh well but I am very grateful to him for his dedication and hard work over many years in exposing the severe problems with nuclear power.
Hugh, one of the most influential anti-nuclear campaigners in Britain, had a gift for considered thought and constructive action. He was unselfish with his time and energy. Hugh’s ‘reach’ stretched from the local, to the national – encompassing the Welsh Assembly, and UK energy policy through his profound contribution to the anti-nuclear movement.
Commons Early Day Motion
EDM 696 HUGH RICHARDS08.09.2010
Flynn, Paul
That this House notes with deep regret the recent death of Hugh Richards, the Welsh environmental architect and campaigner for safe, sustainable energy systems and against nuclear power; believes that perhaps his greatest campaign victory was to persuade the Welsh Assembly Government environment minister in August 2009 to support the Welsh Anti-nuclear Alliance’s call for a public inquiry into proposed nuclear new build in Wales, on the basis that the case for new plants had not been legally justified; recognises his very important contribution to public knowledge on the nuclear waste repository footprint, spent fuel management and so-called high burn-up nuclear fuel for new reactor designs, drawing attention to the fact that such irradiated nuclear fuel is typically hotter and longer-lived than existing used nuclear fuel, by which research he painstakingly demonstrated that the nuclear industry’s plans for long-term management of new build wastes are quite literally unsustainable; further notes his chilling assessment that the use of such nuclear fuel would make the plants more vulnerable to terrorists’ attacks, because of the need for extended storage at reactor sites for up to 160 years, and that30 years after start-up of one of the reactor designs, the AP-1000, currently being proposed, the radioactive inventory will be approximately 22 times that released by the Chernobyl accident in 1986; and calls on the Government to heed carefully Hugh Richards’ splendid and meticulous analytical legacy of the dangers of new nuclear energy development.
Signatures( 4)
Status
Flynn, Paul
Williams, Roger
Hopkins, Kelvin
McDonnell, John
Finally immortalised eh , Your Hughness …..
Huw carried on aptly the work I laid out at Sizewell B Inquiry in 1983-4 at days 100 where I established with Flowers of Nirex the effect of earthquakes on groundwater flow through waste repositories, and Passant, at the Cardiff session of the Hinkley C inquiry (no we still haven’t got a repository through the planning proccess). It seems the Earth is with us Huw. Every time they announce a nuke scheme, an earthquake follows on in Britain. I knew with your passing and the job unfinished that something would happen and now in Japan… if only they’d listen to the Earth herself… I remember most, waiting for you to pick me up near old Radnor the time we were to launch the Close Windscale campaign at the Welsh Showground and I saw a shooting star split in two in the evening sky …….and the way you said it was our reasonableness that frightened the nuclear industry most …well you knew I wasn’t gonna stay reasonable… I always represented the Wild, and you used the ‘wild card’ on the odd occasion, we were a good team, I stole a geiger counter, you let it be used in the Maryport silt scandal… I measured the Chernobyl fallout and you went on Welsh Television with the figures… and the way we chased those lunatics from Windscale offsite at the Royal Welsh… the bungled Irish deal over Wylfa B when the Special Branch started getting at us… you were hard to work with – the only person who could go the full 15 with me in an argument (apart from me mother, I get knocked out in the first there!) and that time we took sides in the nuclear debate on the way to the Sizewell B press meeting at Westminster… I was them, you was you, you won every issue!!! That’s how good the Huw man was. Now, we have lost both He and Don, his advisor, there is no longer an anti-nuclear energy group in Wales, thats how thin on the ground the real expertise were, and that tells you how hard Huw had to work for you… THERE WILL BE NO MORE TANKS COMING OVER THE HILL…… Huw told me he was asked by his superiors in Powys C.C. to stop nuclear waste coming to Powys no matter what – this he achieved for the whole of Wales…. that was his achievement. Thank you.