Nuclear sites identified NUCLEAR SITES

By Fiona Harvey,Environment Correspondent Published: June 11 2005 03:00 Last updated: June 11 2005 03:00
A list of sites earmarked for the disposal of nuclear waste in the 1980s was published yesterday under the Freedom of Information Act.
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Nirex, the nuclear waste agency, emphasised yesterday that the sites were no longer under consideration for nuclear waste disposal and that the proposed programme of waste burial was abandoned in 1997.
The 537 sites, later shortlisted to 12, were kept secret by the government for fear of disrupting the areas involved before final decisions were made. Several sites already housed nuclear facilities.
Nirex, an independent company as of April this year, said a new list of sites would be selected from 2007, after the publication of a report from the committee appointed by the government to choose between various waste disposal options.
The Committee on Radioactive Waste Management will decide in 2006 from a shortlist of four options for disposal, including deep and shallow burial. Nirex's preference would be to bury the waste with the option to retrieve it at a later date.
At present, waste is stored on the surface in 34 places around the country. But this is a temporary storage solution described by nuclear experts as unsatisfactory. The sites are listed on the website, www.nirex.co.uk.
A Nirex spokesman said: "The lesson that has to be learned in this is that the discussion of which sites to choose should take place in the open."
Any selection of new sites would have to take into account factors such as increased knowledge of the UK's geology, which had been thought too complex to hold waste underground in many areas, and climate change, which could cause sea level rises of between 5 metres and 10 metres in the next few hundred years.
Environmental groups seized on the plans to push their opposition to the construction of nuclear power plants, which the government is considering as a way of providing for the UK's energy needs without emissions of carbon dioxide from fossil fuels. Tony Blair, prime minister, has targeted climate change as one of the world's biggest problems.
Jean McSorley, Greenpeace's nuclear campaigner, said: "The public has a right to know where dangerous radioactive wastes are going to be dumped. If the industry gets its way and new nuclear reactors are built, Britain's radioactive waste problem will get even worse. The government already has a big problem on its hands in trying to find sites to dispose of the waste we've already produced."
*Bradwell, Essex
*Potton Island, Essex
*Dounreay, Caithness, Scotland
*Altnabreac, Caithness
*Fuday, Western Isles, Scotland
*Sandray, Western Isles
*Killingholme, South Humberside
*Offshore - East (serviced by Redcar Port)
*Offshore - West (serviced by Hunterston Port)
*Sellafield, Cumbria
*Stanford, Norfolk