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SELLAFIDDLE: Caught AGAIN - Report Says BNFL Bosses Cooked Books

Posted on: Sunday, 15 January 2006, 09:00 CST

By NIALL DONALD

SELLAFIELD bosses BNFL have been accused of fiddling their figures to hide piles of dangerous nuclear waste - AGAIN.

Nuke chiefs were slammed for deliberately under-estimating the levels of lethal radioactive waste from future nuke plants.

A British Government investigation said BNFL bosses produced dodgy figures - so new nuclear reactors would get the go-ahead.

Campaigners now claimed new nuclear power stations in Britain would pose a serious threat to health on this side of the Irish Sea.

Green Party environment spokesman Ciaran Cuffe said: "BNFL have their own agenda - and they have a history of coming up with figures that nobody else agrees with "Nuclear waste is a terrible problem for the environment and nuclear accidents know no national boundaries."

Nuke bosses had claimed Britain needed to build new stations because of worldwide oil shortages.

BNFL said their reactors would produce only 10 per cent extra waste and would not pose a serious environmental risk. But a report by UK Government nuclear watchdog CORWM - the Committee on Radioactive Waste Management - said the new stations would produce a three-fold increase in the amount of radioactive waste.

BNFL calculates future nuclear waste on the basis of volume but the nuclear watchdog rejected this analysis.

The CORWM report said: "A new build programme of nuclear power stations is likely to add less than 10 per cent to the baseline inventory volume, although the quantity of spent fuel for management could be a factor of three greater."

Mr Cuffe said this increase could have a devastating impact on the Irish environment.

He said: "We have seen at Sellafield that accidents do happen - and the threat of terrorist attacks has only increased the risk. This level of nuclear waste would leave problems for future generations for thousands of years to come."

Department of the Environment spokesman Dick Roche said the Irish Government opposed any plans to build new nuclear power stations in Britain.

He said: "The Government considers that the nuclear industry poses a threat to Ireland and should not be pursued. "We have not had a chance to study this new report, but we believe any new nuclear power plants would produce dangerous levels of radioactive material.

"The reality is that the nuclear industry carries with it serious environmental and safety risks and the costs in both economic and environmental terms are unsustainable."

BNFL bosses were slammed by British politicians enraged at the dodgy figures.

Liberal Democrat environment spokesman Norman Baker said: "It shows the brass neck of the nuclear industry that they try to fiddle the figures."

But nuke bosses rejected claims they deliberately deceived the public.

A spokesman for the Nuclear Industry Association said: "We're not fiddling the figures.

"It's just a different way of measuring it."

Source: Sunday Mirror; London

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