Campaigners from local anti-nuclear group CORE (Cumbrians Opposed to a Radioactive Environment) have roundly condemned the Government decision to allow a majority of overseas nuclear wastes to be dumped permanently in the UK under a new policy of ‘waste substitution’.
Over 10,000 cubic metres of foreign Low Level Wastes are already dumped at the Drigg waste dump and this latest decision will see at least a further 3250 cubic metres of significantly more radioactive foreign wastes also retained in the UK. Under waste substitution the only foreign wastes that will now be returned to overseas customers will be the High Level Wastes which, whilst the most radioactive and dangerous of all wastes, amount to just a few hundred cubic metres.
The decision, announced by Trade & Industry (DTI) Secretary Patricia Hewitt on Monday, represents the wholescale abandonment of a policy which, for several decades, has sought to protect the UK from taking responsibility for foreign wastes – at least until a dumping site for Intermediate Level Waste had been established in the country. Such a site is still many decades away. The decision also makes a complete mockery of the contractual requirement, signed up to by all overseas customers, that they must take back all the wastes produced by the reprocessing of their spent fuel at Sellafield.
A CORE spokesperson said today “ This leaves us all in a ‘no-win’ situation whereby on the one hand this decision now confirms once and for all West Cumbria’s status as a fully fledged international nuclear waste dumping ground, and on the other hand commits us to years of highly controversial exports to Europe and Japan of the most hazardous and highest security risk of all nuclear wastes”.
In confirming its approval of the new policy, the DTI has said that a large majority of respondents to last year’s public consultation on the issue were in favour of waste substititution. CORE’s joint response with Greenpeace highlighted the numerous incorrect assumptions, factual errors and uncertainties contained in a consultation document which they described as a dog’s dinner. The DTI also claims that the new policy will benefit the UK both environmentally and economically. The former will benefit from fewer waste return shipments overall having to be made – with a corresponding reduction in transport risk, and the latter will secure additional revenues by charging overseas customers for dumping more of their wastes in the UK.
CORE’s spokesperson added “ Clearly the Government has no qualms in riding rough-shod over the terms of existing customer contracts. On that basis, and taking the DTI claims to their logical conclusion the UK should be looking at not returning any waste at all to overseas customers. This would cut the shipments and associated transport risks to zero and earn even more money from overseas customers for keeping their High Level Waste as well. We’ll be asking the Government why they haven’t gone the ‘whole-hog’.