"This announcement is pure spin" said Greenpeace nuclear campaigner, Pete Roche, he continued
"The government are saying that they are achieving 'major cuts' in radioactive discharges when in fact what they are doing is failing to meet the commitments they made to the international community to reduce radioactive discharges"
"In 1998 the government signed up to an international agreement (the Sintra agreement) to reduce or eliminate radioactive discharges by 2000, and to achieve close to zero concentration of radioactive pollution in the sea from Sellafield by 2020".
"Since the Government signed the Sintra agreement BNFL have repeatedly broken the commitment to reduce radioactive discharges from Sellafield. BNFL's own figures, supplied to the Environment Agency, show that some radioactive discharges into the sea have actually increased".
BNFL recently announced that Magnox reprocessing would end by around 2012. However, this scenario is unfeasible on their current throughput rates. This means that either BNFL will have to double throughput and therefore discharges in order to finish reprocessing by 2012, or reprocessing will continue at the current rate, possibly until 2025. Both options are clearly unacceptable under the terms of the Sintra agreement.
"This announcement shows a government more concerned about propping up the failing nuclear reprocessing industry than listening to the public or our European neighbours" said Pete Roche.
The strategy will be presented at next week's OSPAR conference on marine pollution, where proposals will be put down by Denmark and Ireland to put an end to all radioactive discharges from nuclear reprocessing plants at Sellafield and La Hague in France.
The two countries instead propose moving towards dry storage of nuclear waste, a process used by the majority of nuclear operators worldwide as it is cheaper and less environmentally damaging. This is a position backed by BNFL's main customer for reprocessing in the UK, British Energy, who recently called reprocessing "an economic nonsense, which should end immediately".
The announcement came as Greenpeace released the results of an NOP opinion poll - which found that 85% of British adults oppose radioactive discharges from Sellafield. Even taking into account likely job losses in Cumbria UK public support for a ban was at 64%.
Nearly 90% accepted that Britain should not be importing foreign nuclear waste and 72% said Sellafield should continue properly managed storage.
The opinion poll was conducted by NOP Solutions between May 26 and 28 among 1,005 people aged over fifteen.
Further information:
Contact:
Greenpeace press office on: 020 7865 8255
