from Sunday Herald, 10 December 2006
New arrangements for finding an underground nuclear waste dump in Britain risk failure because ministers have ignored a recommendation from their official advisers to put an independent body in charge.
Members of the government's Committee on Radioactive Waste Management (CoRWM) have "substantial misgivings" about Scottish and English ministers' plans, which they fear could undermine public trust.
In 2003 CoRWM was given the daunting task of working out the best way to dispose of 470,000 cubic metres of deadly radioactive waste created by nuclear power and weapons over the last 50 years.
In July this year it recommended that the waste - some of which which remains dangerous for hundreds of thousands of years - should be buried deep underground, though it didn't say where. It urged that an independent body be set up to oversee the search for a suitable site "without delay".
Although the Westminster government and the Scottish Executive have since agreed that a deep disposal is the way forward, they have rejected the idea of establishing an independent oversight organisation to find a site.
Instead ministers have given the job to the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA), the state agency responsible for dismantling nuclear plants at Sellafield, Dounreay and elsewhere. Nirex, the nuclear waste agency that faced furious protests over disposal plans in the 1980s and 1990s, is being closed down and taken over by the NDA.
CoRWM is meeting in London on Thursday to agree its detailed response to the government's plans. But a newsletter and minutes of its last meeting reveal that many of its 13 experts are worried.
The appointment of the NDA is regarded as "problematic" by some because of its agenda to promote short-term efficiency. There were "potential conflicts and loss of public confidence" caused by its dual role as waste creator and waste disposer.
"The biggest concern was expressed over government’s significant watering-down of CoRWM’s recommendation for an independent overseeing body," stated CoRWM's latest e-bulletin. Plans to revamp CoRWM next year were too weak to provide the oversight that was essential to make the waste disposal programme work, it said.
CoRWM members also criticised the "lack of consultation or transparency" in the way the government had made its decisions, according to the minutes of the committee's last meeting on 9 November. "The key message from the CoRWM process, about building public confidence, had not been reflected and confidence could now be jeopardised."
The minutes also recorded CoRWM's chairman, Gordon MacKerron, as saying that "there was a risk that dissipation of public trust could undermine successful implementation of CoRWM's recommendations".
MacKerron stressed to the Sunday Herald that CoRWM welcomed the government's commitment to deep disposal. "We are preparing a written response to government which will be considered at a CoRWM meeting held in public on Thursday," he said.
Pete Roche, a nuclear consultant based in Edinburgh, accused ministers of "deliberately misinterpreting" some of CoRWM's key recommendations. "There is a serious conflict of interest in the NDA, a waste producer, taking control of building the nuclear waste dump," he said.
The NDA, however, defended its role by saying it had been chosen by the government as "the single UK body accountable for long term waste management". An NDA spokesman added: "Our number one priority in delivering a repository will be safety, as it is with every aspect of our long term decommissioning mission."
The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) denied that there was a conflict of interest in the NDA. "Key elements" of CoRWM's recommendations were being taken forward, said a Defra spokeswoman. "Independent scrutiny and advice are key to the successful delivery of this programme."
But the Green MSP Chris Ballance pointed out that the nuclear industry had a history of hiding problems. "Only an independent body will carry confidence that no corners are being cut and that there is no risk of covering up the inevitable difficulties and dangers," he said.
An official shortlist of a dozen potential nuclear waste dumps was revealed by the Sunday Herald in June 2005, including five in Scotland: Fuday and Sandray in the Western Islands; under the sea off Hunterston in South Ayrshire; and Altnabreac and Dounreay in Caithness.
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