Welsh farmers angry at Omega Pacific's nuclear waste plans

Two weeks ago when Desmond McEvaddy arrived in Trecwn, in Pembrokeshire, south west Wales there was a reception party of local farmers waiting for him.

The farmers were angry because Omega Pacific, a company owned by Mr McEvaddy and British businessman Mr Alan Parker, has put forward the idea of using a 500-acre site it owns nearby for the storage of nuclear waste.

The site is a three-and-a-half mile long steep-sided valley which was formerly a secret Ministry of Defence facility used for the storage of munitions. The site, developed during the second World War, has 58 cavernous storage chambers dug deep into the rock.

Omega bought the site early last year for a reported £400,000 and said it intended using it as a base for the fitting of new engines onto old aircraft. However, according to the company, it later became aware that the site might be useful for the storage of nuclear waste, and it brought this to the attention of a House of Lords Science and Technology select committee which was looking at the problem of where to store waste. At this stage no application for planning permission has been submitted, but the very mention of nuclear storage has led to a fall in land prices in the area. It has also greatly upset local people.

"If they do get away with it, it will be a shadow hanging over us for generations," Mr William Pritchard, whose family farms next to the former MoD site, told The Irish Times. "We've twice gotten to see the McEvaddys, once when Desmond McEvaddy came to Trecwn and another time when some people went unannounced to the Omega offices in Dublin."

On both occasions, Mr Pritchard said, the McEvaddys wouldn't rule out the possibility of the site being used for nuclear waste.