Leaked memo questions safety of plans to bury atomic waste at Sellafield
By Tim King
DOUBTS were cast over the safety of Nirex's plans to bury nuclear waste half a mile underground at Sellafield by a leaked memorandum written by the company's own director of science and published yesterday.
The memo suggests scientists are not confident of predicting the properties of the rock in which the nuclear waste disposal company wants to bury radioactive material.
Publication of the letter, written by John Holmes to a senior manager and leaked last week to Cumbria county council, comes at an embarrassing moment for Nirex, which is waiting for a decision from John Gummer, the Environment Secretary, on whether it can make further investigations of the rock.
The Nirex plan to create an underground laboratory by sinking two shafts to a depth of 2,400ft and boring several exploratory underground tunnels was debated at a 66-day planning inquiry that ended last February.
If Mr Gummer gives permission, the work will begin on Sept 1 at Longlands Farm, Gosforth, close to the Sellafield nuclear reprocessing plant and adjoining the Lake District National Park.
At the planning inquiry, objectors to the Longlands Farm plan disputed Nirex's assumptions about how well the rock would contain the nuclear waste and how quickly radioactivity might be carried to the surface by water passing through the rock.
In his leaked memo, Mr Holmes said unless Nirex could justify changing its estimate of how easily water passed through the Borrowdale Volcanic Group, the rock in which it proposes to bury the waste, then "I have the feeling we may struggle to make a case for the site".
A Nirex spokesman said yesterday that lowering the estimate could be justified.
Mr Holmes wrote that although £200 million had been spent on researching the geological properties of the rock, the experts who are constructing a model of how water travels through the various layers of rock said they needed 10 to 100 times more scientific data.
He said Nirex could obtain more characteristics of the site, or change its approach to prediction, or conclude that the site "is inherently not characterisable to the requisite level".
Cumbria county council and other opponents of the scheme called yesterday on Mr Gummer to reopen the public inquiry.
While Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace both said the memorandum supported objections they had placed before the inquiry, Nirex said it would be publishing a new safety assessment before work began on the underground laboratory.
So far Nirex has spent £349 million on developing its plans for an underground store in Cumbria. The creation of a laboratory in the volcanic rock would cost a further £124 million with a further £71 million to be spent on research.
But yesterday Nirex said the estimate of needing more data was "an off-the-cuff remark intended to promote debate".
A spokesman for Nirex said the memorandum reflected "the healthy level of scientific debate with the company". She said the purpose of the underground laboratory was to resolve scientific uncertainties.
Dr Helen Wallace, a scientist for Greenpeace, said that the laboratory was supposed to confirm the picture that the model had created, but without an accurate model the underground laboratory was useless.
Dr Patrick Green, of Friends of the Earth, said it was essential to create an accurate model of the rock before the shafts were sunk because they would themselves interfere with the water conditions.
Cumbria county council said the internal Nirex memorandum provided a safety assessment "at variance with public statements". A spokesman said Nirex was not getting the predictive results it wanted and should have turned to an alternative site rather than "doggedly persevering with its present programme".
It would not now be sensible for Mr Gummer to make a decision on the planning application.
Nirex said it had not changed its view that "the Sellafield site holds good promise as a suitable deep repository location".
A spokesman said: "It is a pity that the important scientific debate about the disposal of radioactive waste, so that it does not pose a threat to our children and grandchildren, should be turned into a political stunt."
