The UK Nuclear Installations Inspectorate (NII) would close down the Thorp reprocessing plant at Sellafield if limits on the storage of radioactive waste are exceeded, its chief inspector said in Dublin yesterday.
Mr Laurence Williams told an informal meeting of members of the Oireachtas Committee on the Environment he accepted that people in Ireland had "some genuine concerns" over the safety of Sellafield's operations.
Mr Williams stressed that the NII is an independent agency, beholden neither to the British government nor to the nuclear industry, and its primary concern was to ensure the safety of 40 licensed nuclear sites.
In the case of Sellafield, he said the NII set limits on the volumes of liquid radioactive waste stored in tanks for reprocessing at the Thorp plant. "It would stop operating if these limits were exceeded." There was a "very clear policy" to reduce the volumes of liquid waste in all categories to small quantities by 2015 as part of a longer-term safe storage strategy for radioactive waste.
But Mr Williams told The Irish Times that TDs and senators had "no appreciation of what has been done in the last six years to turn things around" at Sellafield and other nuclear installations, including old magnox reactors.
These improvements included the measures announced by British Nuclear Fuels to reduce radioactive discharges to the Irish Sea by up to 95 per cent of their present relatively low levels.
After the hour-long meeting in Leinster House yesterday, the NII's chief inspector agreed to supply members of the Oireachtas committee with a list of safety advances and said he would be prepared to meet them again.
There had been improvements in the decommissioning of these old reactors as well as more secure storage of radioactive waste. "If the government wants a nuclear industry, my job is to ensure that it is safe", Mr Williams said.
Asked how the first meeting had gone, he replied: "It was good for the soul. They had some genuine concerns about Sellafield and I was able to help reassure them that mechanisms are in place to ensure safe operations."