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WANA ON CoRWM DRAFT RECOMMENDATIONS

Nuclear Monitor Issue: 
#647
30/06/2006
Article

(June 30, 2006) "Within the present state of knowledge, CoRWM considers geological disposal to be the best available approach for the long term management of all the material categorised as waste in the CoRWM inventory when compared with the risks associated with other methods of management." CoRWM's draft recommendation 1.

(647.5756) Welsh Anti Nuclear Alliance - Disposal is not 'management' it is the cessation of control and containment. Groundwater travels for up to 600 miles. In the management of radioactive waste to ensure its future containment and stability, it is the length of time over which it remains a hazard that produces a philosophical problem. Geological disposal shifts the risk far into the future in order to lessen the risks to the generation that created the hazard. This approach is unethical on grounds of intergenerational equity. The technical problems with deep disposal of high-level long-lived radioactive waste are such that the concept cannot be said to be 'proven'. Scientific uncertainty over the future stability and containment of radioactive waste deep underground precludes irreversible actions being taken.

Given the degree of uncertainty involved, and setting the present state of knowledge against approaches for the long term, the only 'decision' that can be taken now that will not appear foolish and irresponsible in fifty or a hundred years from now is to retain control over the waste through management rather than to relinquish control over it through disposal.

If storage of radioactive waste on the surface is regarded as too vulnerable to terrorist attacks then near-surface underground storage should be considered to balance ease of management against degree of protection. Deep underground 'management' makes little sense, and is quite obviously designed to encourage three irresponsible human traits: (a) 'out of sight out of mind' (b) inertia and (c) indolence, so that the waste will be left where it is regardless of any misgivings about its containment and stability. Deep underground disposal is presented as helpful to future generations because it bequeaths our radioactive legacy in a form that they do not have to deal with. In reality it gives them a legacy in a form that they cannot do anything about.

CoRWM should make it clear whether or not the waste disposed of would be monitored.

CoRWM states that it takes no position on the desirability or otherwise of nuclear new build.

There is a contradiction in CoRWM's approach on current waste management on the one hand, and its approach to new build on the other.

The current 'muddling through' approach to radioactive waste management is clearly unacceptable to CoRWM. Given that any new nuclear power stations would produce large volumes of highly radioactive spent fuel that would have to stay on each reactor site the hazard (and vulnerability to terrorist attack) thus created far outweighs the current hazards of radioactive waste.

It is insufficient to claim that 'any additions to the inventory should be the subject of an additional stage in the process' of establishing a radioactive waste site. CoRWM should make it clear to Government that any degree of public support for the management of present radioactive waste would be jeopardised by the creation of yet more hazardous waste around the country.

Without this degree of clarity CoRWM's work will rightly or wrongly be seen as the 'thin end of the wedge' rather than helping to address a finite nuclear legacy in an orderly way.

Source and Contact: Hugh Richards, Welsh Anti Nuclear Alliance, P.O. Box 1, Llandrindod Wells, Powys, LD1 5AA, Wales
Tel/Fax: +44 1982 570362
Email: hughrichards@gn.apc.org

WANA Appendix

In response to Q570 "Could you explain the concern you have about nuclear waste?" posed by a member of the Welsh Affairs Committee during a House of Commons inquiry into Energy in Wales on March 21, Hugh Richards offered the following response.

.... back in 1980, when there was a test-drilling programme for high-level radioactive waste disposal, I was working for the local authority and I was told, basically, "Stop it; go out there and stop it." As a local government officer, that was like giving me 007. Basically, I did do a lot of 'phoning round, I spoke to a lot of people and one of the persons that I spoke to was Sir Kingsley Dunham, who had just retired as the Government's Chief Geological Adviser, and he was quite worried. He had made a speech about his worries about plutonium, long-lived radioactive waste, and it was for that reason I tracked him down and had a conversation with him. Basically, I asked him, "What are the geological characteristics of a place deep underground where you could dispose of radioactive waste?" What he said was that it needs to be flat-bedded, sedimentary rock which has not been subjected to tectonic activity, it has not been crumpled up by mountain-building, with a very low, or no, water table and no population; in other words, a desert in the middle of a continent. I said, "Well, where does that leave us, in Britain?" and there was just silence; so I assume that is the sort of advice he was giving to the Government before he retired. Everything we have had since is looking at the possibility of disposing of radioactive waste in Britain and this is where I find it is terribly, terribly simple. Can you dispose of it, which means relinquish control over it, or not? If you cannot relinquish control over it, because you have not got enough scientific certainty about what will happen to the method of encapsulating it and putting it underground, then you have to store it.

The full (uncorrected) transcript of the oral evidence given to the committee can be found at http://www.parliament.uk/parliamentary_committees/welsh_affairs_committee.cfm

CORWM'S DRAFT RECOMMENDATIONS

Since 1997, there has been a vacuum in UK policy on the long-term management of long-lived and more highly active radioactive wastes. CoRWM has drafted the following integrated package of recommendations. This is the start of a process, leading to CoRWM's final recommendations. Once made, they should be acted upon urgently.

 

  1. Within the present state of knowledge, CoRWM considers geological disposal to be the best available approach for the long-term management of all the material categorised as waste* in the CoRWM inventory when compared with the risks associated with other methods of management.

 

CoRWM takes no position on the desirability or otherwise of nuclear new build. We believe that future decisions on new build should be subject to their own assessment process, including consideration of waste. The public assessment process that should apply to any future new build proposals should build on the CoRWM process, and will need to consider a range of issues including the social, political and ethical issues of a deliberate decision to create new nuclear wastes.

* CoRWM's reference position is that reactor decommissioning wastes within CoRWM's inventory will be treated the same as ILW, destined for geological disposal. However, we recognise that management options taken forward for LLW on reactor sites may also be appropriate, if a safety case could be made, for some reactor decommissioning wastes.

For more information visit

http://www.corwm.org.uk/content-0