Ministers break promises over nuclear waste
August 31, 2004
Nuclear waste from overseas power stations has been sealed in concrete and buried in several miles of trenches in the UK, breaching official Government policy.
Ministers have repeatedly promised that nuclear waste from abroad will not be buried in British soil to make good a pledge that Britain will not become a nuclear waste dump for countries such as Japan, Germany, Italy and Switzerland.
But it has now emerged that more than 10,000 cubic metres of foreign nuclear waste is buried at Drigg in Cumbria because it is too expensive to transport it back to the countries that produced it. If the waste was buried side by side the trench would stretch for more than 10 kilometres.
It is part of an ever-increasing mountain of waste stored at more than 20 nuclear sites in Britain. Government advisers have warned that up to 20,000 million cubic metres of this waste will pile up in the coming years - and there is no way of disposing of nearly all of it. The Government is currently spending £1.3bn and is planning to increase this to £2bn a year for the next 40 years to try to solve the mounting problems.
The Guardian website has further information.
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