Nuclear Waste to Be Stockpiled Above Ground for Decades, Report Reveals

BRITAIN'S stockpile of nuclearwaste should be buried deep underground, but will need to be stored on the surface for decades until proper facilities are ready, a longawaited report to the government concluded yesterday.

Stopping far short of the final solution many politicians had hoped for, the Committee on Radioactive Waste Management (CoRWM) said it had instead set out a "road map" for decades of more detailed work.

It stressed it was now for the government to decide on a long- term solution to storing the 470,000 cubic metres of waste in existence or due to emerge from current reactors.

CoRWM also warned its interim findings, which will now go to public consultation before a final report in July, should not be seen as the goahead for a new generation of nuclear power plants.

It said: "CoRWM believes future decisions on new-build should be subject to their own assessment process, including consideration of waste."

After a three-year study, the committee recommended radioactive material be interred several hundred metres underground, using rock to protect the environment.

About one-third of land in the UK could be suitable for such geological disposal, the committee said.

In the 1980s, Nirex, the body charged with the practicalities of storage, drew up a shortlist of 12 sites, including five in Scotland.

CoRWM said developing a storage site, and persuading local people to accept it, could "take several decades or possibly one or two generations". It suggested creating robust interim storage above ground.

The findings will pose problems for those politicians, including Jack McConnell, who suggested the report could provide a solution to the waste problem.

Tony Blair's UK energy review is expected to come out in favour of new nuclear reactors, and Labour in Scotland has also said ministers must consider them.

However, the Liberal Democrat half of the Scottish Executive is firmly opposed to newbuild plants. Nora Radcliffe, the LibDems' environment spokeswoman, said: "The best solution for the long term is to stop producing nuclearwaste."

Mr McConnell, the first minister, stuck to his usual formula of saying no nuclear power stations would be built in Scotland until "the issue of nuclear waste is resolved" - a condition he has yet to define.

He also warned Scotland could not avoid storing the waste it had generated in the past - shipping it elsewhere was not an option.

Environmentalists said the report must not be used by government as a pretext for new reactors. Dr Richard Dixon, director of WWF Scotland, said: "The vague possibility of a hole in the ground, at an unknown site, in 70 years, is hardly a green light."

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