The Minister of State for Energy, Mr Stagg, is to be congratulated for his hands on approach to the multiplicity of issues raised by the expansion of nuclear facilities near Sellafield. The proposal by Nirex to carry out elaborate and expensive tests in Cumbria, the subject of a public inquiry, and if successful to, develop a major underground dump for nuclear waste is a particularly blatant example of the insensitivity of British nuclear policy. One of the admitted advantages of building such a repository on the edge of the Irish Sea is that any accidental discharge of radio, active material will be diluted and dispersed in the seawater and will not pose a threat to major areas of population in Britain.
For the people of this State, who have decided not to take the nuclear path, this is totally unacceptable. A fairly large risk may be diminished as far as the majority of Britons are concerned, but unlike us, they have decided that, on the balance of advantage, they are prepared to accept the risks in return for cheap and reliable nuclear energy. (The fact that it not as cheap or problem free as they were led to believe is for the moment irrelevant.) We, on the others hand, are faced with a permanent and progressives threat to part of our environment. It is not of Chernobyl scale, but it is of the kind that enters the food chain, that distorts the leukemia and Downes Syndrome statistics, and that may also have other unpredictable long term effects.
As Professor Elihu Lauterpacht QC, arguing the, Government's case at the hearing yesterday, pointed out, the burden of proof lies not on objectors to the Nirex plan to show that a real danger exists, but on Nirex "to show that no danger can or will arise" from the accidental discharges which the company admits are a possibility. From this State's point of view, any increase in radioactive pollution, with the associated statistical increase in the incidence of illness, is a bad thing, all the more so since we have taken steps not to contribute to the violation of the natural environment.
For all its sophistication, nuclear power still represents uncertainty. The vast investment Nirex is prepared to make in constructing a "rock characterisation facility" to test the viability of the chosen site is an indication that it is already half convinced, at least, that the area is the right place for the storage of nuclear waste for extremely long periods and if it is right for a relatively small dump, why not a bigger one, and then bigger again? The supply of waste is not finite, and the problems of scientific proof as well as of persuading fearful local people will be recurrent. It is likely that, having gone to the expense and trouble of validating the Cumbrian site, the company will want to concentrate its activities there.
It denies this, at the moment, but recent history has shown that Sellafield is a cumulative phenomenon, and no promise made now can be expected to be binding for all time or, indeed, for the foreseeable future. That is understandable from the British government's point of view, and it is right and proper that that view should be challenged. Mr Stagg made it clear that the intervention in the public inquiry yesterday was part of a much bigger effort to mount such a challenge.