IT WOULD be difficult to think up a worse way of deciding where to put your nuclear waste. First, conduct the process in secret: lock the project鈥檚 scientists behind closed doors and do not allow them to publish to their peers. Then, abandon science as a way to select suitable sites and choose instead a politically convenient location near a nuclear plant.
That, in essence, is what the UK did in the 1980s and 1990s when it chose deep rocks beneath the sprawling nuclear complex at Sellafield in north-west England as the preferred destination for its radioactive waste (see 鈥淧olitics left UK nuclear waste plans in disarray鈥�). The government eventually rejected that site in 1997, on scientific grounds.
To its credit, the UK鈥檚 nuclear waste agency, Nirex, has now confessed to its past sins. As well as a long-secret list of the 537 potential waste sites it initially identified, it released a report which reveals the nakedly political criteria that were used to cut that down to a shortlist of 12, then finally to choose Sellafield. The original plan was to select the best sites by geology. 鈥淗owever, the logic changed part of the way through the exercise,鈥� says Nirex, 鈥渟o that sites were identified for investigation on the basis that there was a measure of local support for nuclear activities.鈥�
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This was a peculiarly British pattern of behaviour. The UK establishment has a disastrous record of resorting to secrecy and paternalism when faced with issues where science and technology affect the public. That attitude led to, among other things, the BSE crisis, which devastated the country鈥檚 beef industry. Perhaps most surprising was that Nirex expected local support when it could not provide reasonable scientific assurances that radioactivity would not appear in groundwater hundreds of years later.
Nirex鈥檚 knock-back caused the UK to fall behind other countries in tackling the waste problem. The US already operates a deep disposal facility for military waste in New Mexico, and is planning to bury spent fuel inside Yucca Mountain in the Nevada desert. Sites for underground repositories are under active investigation in five European countries.
The UK has gone back to the drawing board and asked an advisory committee to recommend the best option for disposal. The committee, due to report by July 2006, is still debating the relative merits of deep disposal and surface storage. Shooting the waste into space and sinking it in polar ice have thankfully been rejected. But while Nirex insists it supports this review process, it remains wedded to the concept of a deep repository. There may be no problem in this. But more worrying is that, despite everything, Nirex still regards Sellafield as 鈥渢echnically a very good site鈥�. Maybe it still has a few lessons to learn.
