News : Letter to the Whitehaven News on 2nd December on safety
Dear Sir,
Pete Wilkinson makes some important points in his letter (25th November).
Safety is clearly the most important issue in deciding whether this community should take part in the Government’s search for somewhere to locate a repository for higher activity radioactive wastes.
The Government has made it clear that this is a voluntary process. It is up to the people living in this area to decide whether or not it should come to West Cumbria. If we are not convinced that a repository would be safe then we will not agree to have it here.
The West Cumbria Managing Radioactive Waste Safely Partnership brings together a wide range of organisations from across Cumbria such as local authorities, parish councillors, the Lake District National Park, Churches Together in Cumbria and the National Farmers Union.
Not surprisingly, this community Partnership has placed the issue of safety at the top of its agenda.
We have considered a number of aspects of safety in our work so far. When the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) publishes the latest results of its work on safety issues next year we will be looking at this in more depth.
The points raised by the Nuclear Waste Advisory Associates will be an important part of those discussions and we are keen to hear how the NDA responds to the concerns raised in their report.
Our aim in talking to the public at this stage is simply to give people the chance to learn more about this process, to find out what questions they want us to be asking and to get their initial views. We want people to be involved at every step.
We are not expecting people to give us their final view on whether West Cumbria should take part in the search for a site. We do not yet have all the information we need to take that decision.
We will be consulting local people again later next year before the Partnership makes its recommendation on whether or not this area should go to that next stage.
Even if this area does take part in this process we can say no to a facility up until the point when work could start on building it, probably more than a decade from now.
I hope that everyone in this area will take some time to find out more about these issues and get involved. For more information visit www.westcumbriamrws.org.uk.
You can also contact us by calling a free helpline on 0800 048 8912 or by emailing contact@westcumbriamrws.org.uk. We also have a Facebook page and you can follow @westcumbriamrws on Twitter.
Councillor Tim Knowles
Chairman, West Cumbria Managing Radioactive Waste Safely Partnership
You can see the letter from Pete Wilkinson and others, which was published in the Whitehaven News the previous week, below and on the Whitehaven News website:
Sir
The West Cumbrian Managing Radioactive Waste Safely partnership is to be congratulated on its recent information drive designed to encourage local residents to express their views on taking the next step in hosting a repository for higher activity waste.
However, throughout the documentation and the DVD provided to facilitate discussion, there is almost no mention of the issue which will be pivotal in deciding whether or not the repository is acceptable to the public of West Cumbria – safety. Safety will undoubtedly be the key factor in deciding people’s views, yet information relating to the topic is virtually absent from the partnership material.
Although CoRWM recommended disposal, the recommendation was heavily qualified and conditional on an intensified research and development programme to reduce the level of scientific and technical uncertainty around disposal to the point where it was felt safe ! to proceed. We have not yet reached that point and are indeed a long way from it.
Earlier this year, Nuclear Waste Advisory Associates (NWAA) – an independent group with expertise in radio-chemistry, nuclear waste policy, radiation risks and planning – compiled a technical report on disposal, following an initiative at a meeting with the Environment Agency. This report lists more than 100 technical and scientific issues which need to be addressed at generic and site-specific levels before the sort of confidence the NDA apparently already places on disposal could be justified.
Among those issues are: how to contain and isolate radioactive material while at the same time allowing hydrogen gas to escape, an issue which contradicts the ‘safety in the multi-barrier concept’; our lack of understanding of the impact of low levels of exposure to radioactivity; the fact that gassified radioactive carbon could escape from the repository over a very short space! of time (decades) giving a much higher than predicted dose to! the peo ple above; the uncertainties which surround the longevity of various types of packaging; microbial activity and general swiftness of decay of packaging. These issues are recognised now.
Matters relating to safety, and, moreover, the means by which these safety uncertainties are to be addressed, must be put before the Cumbrian public as soon as possible.
The issues register compiled by NWAA exists today and is in the possession of the partnership. It is time the findings of the register were made known by the partnership to all interested citizens and groups of Cumbria.
Pete WILKINSON
pp Professor Andrew BLOWERS, Dr Rachel WESTERN, Dr David LOWRY, Pete ROCHE, Val MAINWOOD, Phil DAVIES and Dr Jill SUTCLIFFE