Vol. 558 No. 3
8 Mr. O'Shea asked the Minister for the Environment and Local Government his plans to raise with the British Government, the doubling, since 1986, of the amount of radioactive waste which is being stored in Britain; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [23886/02]
The British Government is aware of the concerns of the Irish Government about the volume of radioactive waste stored in Britain, in particular at Sellafield. As recently as March this year, the Irish Government responded to the British Government's public consultation document of September 2001 which was entitled "Managing Radioactive Waste Safely". In its response, the Government again expressed its total opposition to the spent fuel reprocessing activities at Sellafield which are responsible for increasing the volume of radioactive waste there and for which there is no final disposal route. The Government also pointed out that the unresolved problems associated with the management of radioactive waste, along with the risk of serious accidents at nuclear facilities, make nuclear power an unsustainable option for energy production.
The Government is particularly concerned about both the volume and continued build up of the storage of highly active waste in liquid form in tanks at Sellafield. The storage of this waste in liquid form has the potential to lead to a major release of radioactivity as it has to be continually cooled. The British Government and the nuclear industry accept that the storage of this highly active waste in this form is not a sustainable process and British Nuclear Fuels has, for some years now, been vitrifying the waste, a process whereby it is solidified into a safer form of storage. We have been pressing the British Government for many years now to speed up the vitrification process and to cease reprocessing activities which are only adding to the volume of liquid waste. The Irish Government views as untenable the operation of the Sellafield MOX plant, and continued reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel at Sellafield when there is no final disposal route for the waste arising. We will continue to press strongly for a cessation of these activities at Sellafield.
