イギリス政府は自国の放射性廃棄物問題を解決する費用の足しにすべく、有料で日本、ドイツ、イタリア、スペイン、スイス、スウェーデンの放射性廃棄物の保管埋め立てを行う方針を立てたと言う話。総額6億8千万ポンドで引き受けるつもり。セラフィールドの廃棄物保管場には海外の廃棄物がガラス固化体、液状、固形ドラムで置かれているが、イギリスの原子炉で量を減らしてから、これまでのように発生国に返すことなく埋めることになる。

http://www.guardian.co.uk/nuclear/article/0,2763,1373964,00.html
UK to keep foreign nuclear waste

Paul Brown, environment correspondent
Wednesday December 15, 2004
The Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/

The government has decided to bury Japanese, German, Italian, Spanish, Swiss and Swedish nuclear waste in Britain as a money-making venture to help pay for the UK's own unresolved nuclear waste problems.

The decision, announced in a written Commons statement, has been taken by the trade secretary Patricia Hewitt despite the fact that Britain as yet has no depository for the waste. It overturns a 30-year-old policy that the UK would not become a dumping ground for other countries' nuclear waste.

Previously both Conservative and Labour governments have said waste arising as a result of lucrative nuclear fuel reprocessing contracts at Sellafield in Cumbria should be returned to the country of origin.

Successive governments had intended to return all highly dangerous waste contaminated with plutonium to its country of origin - a total of 225 nuclear shipments. This week's decision means keeping and disposing of the bulk of that toxic waste in Britain.

Mrs Hewitt said: "The benefits are both environmental and economic."

She said the additional income - up to £680m - would be "used for nuclear clean-up which will result in savings for the UK taxpayer over the longer term".

Environmental groups warn that it will leave Britain with thousands of tonnes of waste for which there is currently no form of disposal.

Jean McSorley, nuclear campaigner for Greenpeace, said: "The government is trying to encourage Japanese utilities, and others, to sign more reprocessing contracts at Sellafield knowing that they will not have to have their nuclear waste returned."

The government has set up a committee to find a way of disposing of high- and intermediate-level nuclear waste safely. It considered 20 options, including burying the waste in the Antarctic and firing it at the sun. No preferred method has been established, but it is likely to be either storage above ground or disposal below ground in deep rock caverns.

British Nuclear Fuels, which currently stores the foreign waste at Sellafield, said it was delighted by the decision. A spokesman said it would mean up to 3,000 cubic metres of radioactive waste would now not need to be shipped back to its place of origin, saving tens of thousands of tonnes of greenhouse gases in ship fuel.

As a result of this week's decision, the foreign waste that will remain in Britain will be exchanged for much smaller quantities of waste of a higher radioactivity produced from British reactors - up to 38 shipments. The government says this trade amounts to an equal quantity of radioactivity.

Critics though raise the prospect of the British waste being hijacked by terrorists. Llew Smith, Labour MP for Blaenau Gwent, last night asked a written question of Ms Hewitt about her assessment of any increased terrorist threat. "Intermediate level waste is bulky and difficult to handle but shipments of high level waste in smaller cannisters might be an attractive terrorist target," he said.

The policy would mean very long-lived, high-activity radioactive waste from Sellafield being shipped to Japan. To European continental customers it will be carried on ferries and trains to Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Sweden and Italy.

The government says using armed police and transports mounted with guns to escort the high level waste minimises the risk.

Currently overseas nuclear waste is stored at Sellafield either in the form of glass blocks, untreated liquid waste, or in drums of solid waste. It is mixed up together with UK waste but British Nuclear Fuels keeps a log of how much radioactivity had been allocated to each country.

Gordon MacKerron, head of the government's committee on radioactive waste management, said: "Of course the volumes of nuclear waste we will have to deal with in Britain will be substantially greater... but overall because of the large existing volume of UK waste it will not make a big difference in percentage terms.

"In practical terms it does not make a lot of difference to our overall nuclear waste problem."

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原発 劣化ウラン フッ素2掲示板へ

フォローアップ:

• 英が放射性廃棄物政策を転換、中レベルを国内で処分（読売）【高レベルは送り返し】 ネオファイト 2004/12/16 11:44:03 (1)
  • イタリアが核廃棄物を英国に輸出[ガーディアン／美浜の会] なるほど 2005/1/23 21:43:08 (0)

　

　

　

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