Roche to raise Sellafield concerns

Minister for the Environment Dick Roche is to meet British secretary for trade and industry Alan Johnson to raise concerns about…

Minister for the Environment Dick Roche is to meet British secretary for trade and industry Alan Johnson to raise concerns about safety at the Sellafield nuclear facility.

Mr Roche will travel to London next month for the meeting, where he will highlight a major leak at the Thorp reprocessing plant that went undetected for nine months.

Mr Johnson has direct responsibility for the British Nuclear Group, the state-owned company responsible for the Sellafield site.

The meeting comes as members of the Oireachtas Committee on the Environment visited the facility yesterday, where they were also informed about a minor leak in a waste-pipe pumping radioactive waste into the Irish Sea.

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A detailed internal report about the major leak, which was discovered last April, criticised the way evidence of a possible leak was dismissed, and how the facility failed to act on the information quickly enough.

The leak saw 83,000 litres of highly radioactive waste seep into a containment tank unnoticed. The British Nuclear Group, which operates the plant, said the leak posed no safety or environmental threat.

A spokesman for Mr Roche said the Minister would be highlighting the leak and calling again for the facility to be closed, expressing the Government's lack of confidence in the way Sellafield is operated and managed.

During yesterday's visit, the Government and Mr Roche were also criticised by Opposition parties for the official response to the leak at Sellafield.

Last week's leak was caused by corrosion on a pipe bringing radioactive waste into the Irish Sea.

A spokeswoman for the Sellafield site said it posed no safety threat as it was bringing waste already licensed for discharge, and that tests on beaches near the pipe showed no unusual radioactivity readings.

However, the chairman of the Oireachtas Environment Committee, Seán Haughey, who led yesterday's visit, said there were serious safety issues concerning the leak.

Mr Haughey said they met representatives from the British Environment Agency, who told them they had concerns arising from the leak, as it showed evidence of corrosion on key pipes at the facility.

Green Party TD Ciarán Cuffe, who was also on the visit, criticised the Government's approach to the nuclear plant, claiming it had become "complacent about Sellafield".

"The view that the Sellafield problem has gone away is mistaken. That view misunderstands the nuclear industry. Even if all reprocessing contracts were completed by 2012 . . . site clean-up will last 150 years after that date."