WEEK 27 June 25th to July 1st 2001

   From the Greenpeace homepages:

   SELLAFIELD PLANS MASSIVE INCREASES IN DISCHARGES OF NUCLEAR WASTE TO SEA

   26 June 2001

   Leaked documents published in the UK Telegraph newspaper today show that massive increases in nuclear discharges into the Irish Sea from the notorious Sellafield nuclear plant in Cumbria are planned. The documents (1) show that Sellafield's operator, BNFL, plans to breach international commitments to reduce the discharges, made by Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott in 1998. Prescott stated "This is the day the UK finally throws off the mantle of Dirty Man of Europe" when he made the commitment to the 1998 ministerial meeting of the OSPAR Commission in Sintra, Portugal (2).
   "Sellafield's nuclear pollution contaminates the shores of Ireland and our Nordic neighbours, as far north as the Arctic," said Dr Helen Wallace of Greenpeace. "The Government promised not to be a dirty neighbour, but Sellafield has secret plans to pour yet more deadly radioactivity into the sea."
   Greenpeace is providing the leaked documents to the annual meeting of the OSPAR Commission meeting in Valencia, Spain this week. Sellafield discharges some 8 million litres of nuclear waste into the sea each day. The radioactivity contaminates sea water, sediments and marine life such as winkles and lobsters. Nuclear reprocessing at Sellafield, and at La Hague in France, is the major source of radioactive discharges in the OSPAR region.
   "If the UK is to meet its international commitments, it must stop nuclear reprocessing today," said Dr Wallace, "There is no safe dose of radiation and these massive discharges threaten the environment and health of future generations."
   Last year in Copenhagen, OSPAR adopted a decision to review reprocessing "as a matter of priority" and implement dry storage of existing nuclear waste fuel as an alternative. However, the UK and France refused to accept the decision, which was supported by the 13 other OSPAR member countries.

  

   Notes for editors:

   (1) The documents, available from www.britishnuclearfuels.com, show predicted discharges from Sellafield from 2000 to 2008. The predictions appear to have been made by BNFL for the UK Environment Agency, for its forthcoming review of Sellafield's discharges. Discharges of many radioactive substances are predicted to double, and some to increase four-fold by the next OSPAR ministerial meeting in 2003.

   (2) The OSPAR Commission is charged with reducing and eliminating marine pollution in the North-East Atlantic region. Members are Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK and the EU. The Objective agreed by ministers in 1998 was "...to prevent pollution of the maritime area from ionising radiation through progressive and substantial reductions of discharges, emissions and losses of radioactive substances, with the ultimate aim of concentrations in the environment near background values for naturally occurring radioactive substances and close to zero for artificial radioactive substances"[emphasis added]. The timeframe included commitments for the years 2000 and 2020.