MEPs seek closure of Sellafield

ON May 23 last, the British government issued a consultation document on the future of the nuclear industry in Britain and last week the four Fianna Fáil MEPs made a formal submission in response.

While energy choices are a sovereign issue decided individually by EU states, we still have serious concerns about safety issues at the Sellafield nuclear plant.

While there are 14 primary nuclear facilities in Britain, Sellafield has a long history of very serious systems failures. For this reason alone, we believe there should be an orderly and safe closure of that nuclear facility.

We support the two legal cases taken by the European commission in recent years against the British government over safety breaches at Sellafield.

The European commission is right to demand answers from the British government as to how it is going to clean up the notorious B30 dump, which has been home to an unquantified level of radioactive materials since 1959.

The European commission also wants answers as to how 83,000 litres of radioactive liquids leaked from the Thorp reprocessing facility. This plant has remained closed since April 2005 because of this incident. In reality, the engagement by the British government in the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuels on a commercial basis from third countries has been an abject failure.

British Nuclear Fuels Ltd at Sellafield has a licence to reopen this Thorp plant since last January, but it cannot do so because of ongoing safety considerations.

We believe the European commission should be highlighting to a greater extent in the media decisions that it takes concerning the Sellafield plant.

We also believe the EU should set up an independent nuclear inspectorate that would have the power to investigate safety standards within all nuclear facilities in Europe.

We have justified concerns about the operation of Sellafield plant, which is only 100 miles from Clogher Head in Co Louth. We are demanding answers from the British government both from a national and European perspective.

Liam Aylward MEP

Vice-President

Climate Change Committee

European Parliament

Strasbourg