[NukeNet] Scotland: Row over disposal of nuclear waste

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Row over disposal of nuclear waste
UK ministers have been accused by one of their former advisers of ignoring official advice on the disposal of nuclear waste to pave the way for a new programme of nuclear power stations.

Pete Wilkinson, a member of the government's Committee on Radioactive Waste Management (CoRWM), has also praised the Scottish Executive for boycotting the latest public consultation on plans to bury the waste deep underground.

CoRWM, which has been advising ministers for the last four years, is being wound up this weekend to be replaced by another advisory committee. It concluded that disposing of highly radioactive waste in an underground repository was "the best available approach".

But CoRWM also urged more research into alternatives, and a "robust programme of interim storage" for 100 years or more in case the search for a repository was delayed or failed.

Wilkinson criticised Westminster for "ignoring" CoRWM's integrated package of recommendations on research and interim storage. "Such cherry picking allows the predetermination of a solution' to waste management and therefore the removal of a traditional hurdle to new nuclear build," he said.

"By concentrating on disposal and the search for a repository site to the exclusion of other recommendations, Westminster is unfairly favouring disposal when a research programme may demonstrate no societal consensus for that management option."

Wilkinson, a Suffolk-based nuclear consultant and former Greenpeace campaigner, is sceptical of deep disposal as a way of disposing of nuclear waste. He is concerned about the risks of leakage over the hundreds of thousands of years for which the waste has to be isolated from the environment.

He backs the SNP-led executive's recent decision not to take part in a consultation over deep disposal. "It is a valid and justifiable policy," he said.

Wilkinson's support was embraced by environment secretary Richard Lochhead. "Mr Wilkinson's comments are highly significant given his central involvement in the CoRWM process," said the minister.

"We do not accept that it is right to seek to bury nuclear waste, which will remain active for thousands of years, in a deep geological facility or to expect any community to host such a facility. This out of sight, out of mind' policy should not extend to Scotland."

A spokeswoman for the department of environment, food and rural affairs said: "We shall address such concerns in an open and transparent way, on the basis of sound scientific and technical evidence."

Further support for deep disposal of waste came from Roger Brunt, the government's chief nuclear security adviser and director of the office for civil nuclear security in Oxfordshire. "I believe that the best place for radioactive waste is in a long term repository," he has said.

9:49pm Saturday 18th August 2007


By Rob Edwards, Environment Editor


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