Warning on nuclear waste disposal
April 4, 2005
Proposals to send Britain's nuclear waste into space or to the bottom of the sea are impractical, a government advisory committee has warned.
The Committee on Radioactive Waste Management recommends that waste be either buried underground or stored temporarily in facilities above ground.
Nuclear research has left the UK with a radioactive legacy which presently has nowhere to go.
There will be yet more waste when nuclear plants are decommissioned.
Locations undecided
The committee has consulted with experts and the public over the last 18 months, and has come up with a shortlist of options which it considers viable.
The waste could be buried deep underground, or in shallower secure facilities; these repositories could be sealed off or left accessible.
There is no recommendation on where they should be located.
Alternatively the waste could be put in secure storage above ground until better technologies become available.
These options will now go for further consultation.
But some scientists question the need for this committee at all.
They say it is simply opening a debate which Britain has already been through, and which many other countries have successfully resolved.
This story originally appeared on the BBC News website.
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