Nuclear safety meeting

Press, 28 July 1976, Page 6

Nuclear safety meeting

A public meeting to allow local authorities to inform the public of emergency procedures in the event of an accident to a nuclearpowered warship in Lyttelton Harbour will be held today by the Lyttelton branch of the Values Party. The meeting will be held at 8 p.m. in the Harbour Board employees social club hall in Jacksons Road. 'fhe residents and workers of Lyttelton would be the

first to suffer in such an accident, said the co-ordinator of the Lyttelton Values Party (Mr C. G. Cook). Police, the Education Board, Civil Defence, and other responsible authorities had been invited to use this meeting to make their procedures public, he said. Action, such as closing the schools while such a ship was in the harbour had been suggested, said Mr Cook. The basin shape of Lyttel-

ton Harbour was an ideal place to contain radioactive fall-out for some time before winds spread it further, according to a Values Party pamphlet advertising the meeting. Little was known about the safety measures employed on United States warships as they were not made public, but they were probably not as stringent as those applying to land-based reactors,’ the pamphlet said.