Control of Sellafield heads for private sector

The Government has said its position of demanding the closure of Sellafield remains unchanged despite Britain's decision to hand responsibility for the site to the private sector.

Ireland has been engaged in a five-year legal campaign to have the controversial Sellafield complex in Cumbria in northwest England shut down.

The British government confirmed today it planned to sell off British Nuclear Group (BNG), the clean-up unit of state-owned British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL), by autumn next year. BNG controls the Sellafield site.

The expected announcement came on the same day the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) said the cost of cleaning up Britain's ageing nuclear power plants could be around £70 billion (€100 billion), £14 billion more than previously thought.

British Trade and Industry Secretary Alan Johnson said he believed a competitive sale was in the best commercial interest for BNFL. "By bringing in external expertise more quickly, it also contributes to improved clean-up performance for the NDA and is therefore good for the taxpayer," he said.

But Minister for the Environment Dick Roche said the announcement did not change Ireland's view that the British government remains ultimately responsible for ensuring safety at Sellafield.

"Our concerns regarding marine discharges, operational safety and the storage of very large quantities of highly active waste on the Sellafield site remain and I, as Minister, will continue to represent these views clearly, frankly and consistently to the UK government and administration at all levels as I have done in the past," he said.

The Sellafield plant can reprocess around 5,000 tonnes of spent nuclear fuel a year - around a third of annual world production. It has a poor history of safety, and government inquiries in recent years have even found that safety records had been falsified by staff.

The European Commission issued a warning to the plant last month over inadequate accounting and reporting of its nuclear material. An EC spokesman said the accounting system meant it was impossible to track exactly what was happening to the material at any given time.

Mr Roche said waste and radioactive discharge was still being released into the Irish Sea and described the practice of using income from waste reprocessing at the Thorp plant in Sellafield to fund clean-up operations elsewhere as "untenable".

The Green Party's environment spokesman, Ciarán Cuffe, accused the Government of "silence" over Sellafield. He said Taoiseach Bertie Ahern failed to raise Irish objections to the European Council's call for a new generation of nuclear power during a meeting of the European Council last week.

"The Government may feel that its own failure to develop a vibrant renewable energy sector puts it in no position to lecture the British on their energy considerations," he said.

Fine Gael's Fergus O'Dowd said he was deeply concerned as Sellafield represents "a clear and present danger" to Ireland. He said the Taoiseach must raise the matter with Prime Minister Blair at their meeting in Armagh next week.

Labour nuclear affairs spokesman Emmett Stagg said today's announcement raised serious questions about the safety of Britain's nuclear energy industry. He said Sellafield's safety record was "abysmal" when it was in state ownership.

Sinn Féin's environment spokesman, Arthur Morgan ,said the implications for Ireland were "far reaching and terrifying" and called on the Government to oppose the move "by every means possible".