NIREX, the nuclear waste company, has misled the public over the safety
of its plan to dispose of radioactive waste, says a former government adviser.
John Knill, chairman of the Radioactive Waste Management Advisory Committee from
1987 to 1995, accuses the company of concealing how radioactivity from an
underground repository might seep to the surface.
Knill was prompted to go public after the leak of a memo in which Nirex鈥檚
director of science, John Holmes, revealed doubts about the permeability of the
rock above the proposed repository near the Sellafield nuclear plant in Cumbria
(This Week, 25 January, p 8).
Knill says that the memo is a 鈥渟tarkly different assessment鈥� from any
previously given by Nirex. He is urging the environment secretary, John Gummer,
not to give the go-ahead to Nirex鈥檚 application to build an underground rock
laboratory at the site before more is known about its hydrogeology.
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