ENERGY minister Brian Wilson has received a copy of The Evening Star's revelations about security at Sizewell Power Stations.But no one from his office at the Department of Trade and Industry was prepared to comment on the security breach – which allowed Star photographer Richard Snasdell to be flown within a few hundred yards of the reactors at Suffolk's two nuclear power plants.

ENERGY minister Brian Wilson has received a copy of The Evening Star's revelations about security at Sizewell Power Stations.

But no one from his office at the Department of Trade and Industry was prepared to comment on the security breach – which allowed Star photographer Richard Snasdell to be flown within a few hundred yards of the reactors at Suffolk's two nuclear power plants.

"We know about the incident, but we are not able to comment on what happened," said a spokesman for Mr Wilson.

"The issue of the plane flying in the exclusion zone has been taken up with the Civil Aviation Authority and the Department of Transport who are investigating what happened."

The Star chartered an aircraft, saying we wanted to take some aerial photos of the Suffolk coast – expecting to have to turn around well before we reached Sizewell.

Our plane was able to fly right past the two power stations, no warning was radioed to the pilot and no security arrangements were visible.

Anti-nuclear campaigner Charles Barnett said an exercise earlier this year suggested that a plane strike on a nuclear plant would devastate a wide area.

He claimed it was shown that a plane strike on Bradwell nuclear power station in Essex would affect 500,000 people as far away as north Kent.

A spokesman for Magnox Electric, which runs Bradwell power station as well as Sizewell A, said the exercise had been designed to test the ability of emergency services to react to a nuclear crisis.

"We let the simulated exercise run without stopping it – anything that could go wrong did go wrong.

"I don't know where Mr Barnett gets his figures – that's a matter for him," he said.

Weblinks:

www.shutdown-sizewell.org.uk

www.bnfl.com Website for BNFL, parent company of Magnox Electric which runs Sizewell A.