New Fury Over Massive Nuclear Dumping By UK
Sep 01 - Belfast Telegraph
Up to 10,000 cubic metres of foreign nuclear waste - enough to fill a trench six miles long - has been buried on the Cumbrian coast 50 miles from Ireland.
Green party leader Trevor Sargent TD described the disclosure as
"shocking and needing an urgent response from the Irish Government".
"The report reveals not only that non-British nuclear waste is being
buried along the Irish Sea coast at Drigg, Cumbria but also that the British
government plans to turn this practice into a money- spinner, which further
increases the exposure of Ireland to nuclear contamination risks," he said.
A spokesperson for Environment Minister Martin Cullen said yesterday they had
been in contact with the UK authorities following the claims. "They have
informed us that radioactive waste produced as a result of reprocessing in the
UK will be returned to the country of its origin."
He said the minister's view was "crystal clear, the transport of nuclear
waste is dangerous and wrong and dumping at sea is also dangerous and
wrong".
A spokesperson for British Nuclear Fuels Ltd (BNFL) said yesterday that Drigg
was a repository for low level waste and that higher level waste was held at
Sellafield. The decision to hold low level waste at Drigg meant the number of
international transportations of returned waste to overseas customers would be
significantly reduced from 225 to 38, BNFL said.
Sea shipments of waste to Europe would be reduced from about 50 to an
estimated 8, and to Japan from 23 to 11. Fewer transports further reduce any
security risk associated with nuclear transports, the firm said.
Mr Sargent said: "The Irish Government was promised, as was the British
public, that nuclear waste brought to Britain would be returned to its country
of origin."
Nuclear waste from overseas power stations has been sealed in concrete and
buried in several miles of trenches in breach of official government policy, The
Guardian newspaper revealed yesterday.
UK ministers have repeatedly promised that nuclear waste from abroad will not
be buried in British soil to make good a pledge that Britain will not be a
nuclear waste dump for countries such as Japan, Germany, Italy and Switzerland.
But it has now emerged that the waste is buried because it is too expensive
to transport it back to the countries that produced it. It is part of an
ever-increasing mountain of waste stored at more than 20 nuclear sites in
Britain.
Government advisers have warned that up to 20,000 million cubic metres of
this waste will pile up in the coming years - and there is no way of disposing
of nearly all of it.
The Guardian said it had learned from Department of Trade and Industry
consultation documents and key advisers that the government is to announce a
change in its official policy and start charging foreign governments for the
service of storing their waste and subsequently disposing of it in concrete
bunkers.
Fianna Fail party chairman Seamus Kirk TD last night hit out at what he
descirbed as British government plans "to establish a global nuclear dust
bin on our doorstep". He said Ireland would have to " call on all
other countries to boycott this underground environmental timebomb."
"Once again the safety of Irish people is placed at risk while the
British Government sees a cost-effective answer to a highly risky and expensive
problem," he said.
Source: Irish Independent