Response from Greenpeace UK to the consultation Review of the Siting Process for a Geological Disposal Facility September 2013, which covers aspects of the disposal of the UK’s higher activity radioactive wastes (HARW), including spent nuclear fuel.
Response from Greenpeace UK to the consultation Review of the Siting Process for a Geological Disposal Facility September 2013, which covers aspects of the disposal of the UK’s higher activity radioactive wastes (HARW), including spent nuclear fuel.
Responding
to the news that councils in Cumbria have voted against the construction of an
underground nuclear waste facility, Greenpeace Energy Campaigner Leila Deen
said:
"This
decision represents yet another major blow for the Government's attempts to
force the construction of costly nuclear power plants.
“Even the PM
admits we need a plan to store waste before we can build a single new plant.
This decision shows that dumping waste in uncertain geology near one of the
country's most pristine national parks is no solution at all.
The radioactive waste produced by nuclear power remains harmful
for tens or hundreds of thousands of years. The government is desperate for a solution – but burying it under
the Lake District isn’t the answer.
The troubled plutonium and uranium reprocessing plant at Sellafield may have to shut down.
The Sellafield mixed oxide plant (SMP) cost the taxpayer £472 million and was intended to turn plutonium and uranium recovered from used nuclear fuel into usable fuel for overseas nuclear reactors.
In the 'funny if it weren't so scary' category we have the advert which ran last week in the Whitehaven News, the local paper for west Cumbria where Sellafield is to be found. As reported in the Guardian at the weekend, LLW Repository Ltd - the company which has recently taken over managing the site - have found there are significant holes in records detailing what radioactive waste was dumped in the repository at nearby Drigg; so they're appealing for people who worked at Sellafield in the 60s, 70s and 80s to rack their brains and fill in the gaps.
The nuclear industry has hitched a ride on the climate change
bandwagon, proclaiming that nuclear power will solve the world's global
warming and energy problems in one sweeping "nuclear renaissance."
As you might expect, there's a catch. Nuclear energy faces escalating
capital costs, a radioactive waste backlog, security and insurance
gaps, nuclear weapons proliferation, and expensive reactor
decommissioning that will magnify the waste problem.
