SUBSTITUTION FOR INTERMEDIATE LEVEL RADIOACTIVE WASTE

Summary

That this House rejects the Government's updated policy on the substitution of intermediate level radioactive wastes, as notified to Parliament in the Written Statement by the Trade and Industry Secretary, Official Report, column 114WS, 13th December; notes with concern that, notwithstanding ministerial, and indeed Prime Ministerial, protestations of the impending dangers of more terrorist attacks, this substitution policy will ensure larger quantities of very long-lived, very high activity radioactive waste being put on the high seas to Japan passing through either the Panama Canal on the west route or the Straits of Moluccas on the eastern route, and on a ro-ro ferry to continental Europe and train to final destination, thus creating additional targets for terrorists; further notes that while this policy change will benefit BNFL commercially, as it will not now have to ship very large quantities of radioactive reprocessing waste back to countries of origin of the nuclear fuel, it will also reverse the policy promise that radioactive waste arising from the reprocessing of foreign spent fuel would be repatriated to the country from where it initially came, made to this House by the then Energy Secretary, the Right honourable Tony Benn, on 29th January 1976; believes that this misguided reversal of policy will result in significantly larger quantities of nuclear waste being managed long-term in the United Kingdom, despite the fact that no agreed strategy has yet been concluded for the existing UK-origin nuclear waste; deplores the decision to effectively make the UK the nuclear dump for the world; and calls upon the Government to reverse this environmentally unsustainable and insupportable policy.

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Timeline

1. 20 December 2004

   Early Day Motion

   That this House rejects the Government's updated policy on the substitution of intermediate level radioactive wastes, as notified to Parliament in the Written Statement by the Trade and Industry Secretary, Official Report, column 114WS, 13th December; notes with concern that, notwithstanding ministerial, and indeed Prime Ministerial, protestations of the impending dangers of more terrorist attacks, this substitution policy will ensure larger quantities of very long-lived, very high activity radioactive waste being put on the high seas to Japan passing through either the Panama Canal on the west route or the Straits of Moluccas on the eastern route, and on a ro-ro ferry to continental Europe and train to final destination, thus creating additional targets for terrorists; further notes that while this policy change will benefit BNFL commercially, as it will not now have to ship very large quantities of radioactive reprocessing waste back to countries of origin of the nuclear fuel, it will also reverse the policy promise that radioactive waste arising from the reprocessing of foreign spent fuel would be repatriated to the country from where it initially came, made to this House by the then Energy Secretary, the Right honourable Tony Benn, on 29th January 1976; believes that this misguided reversal of policy will result in significantly larger quantities of nuclear waste being managed long-term in the United Kingdom, despite the fact that no agreed strategy has yet been concluded for the existing UK-origin nuclear waste; deplores the decision to effectively make the UK the nuclear dump for the world; and calls upon the Government to reverse this environmentally unsustainable and insupportable policy.

   Source: Early Day Motion

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• Llew Smith · Labour · Primary sponsor

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