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UK facing huge bill for nuclear waste storage

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Note – in the article below, that the UK’sNational Policy Statements are part of a strategy to strip local authorities of the power of approving big energy projects.

£18 billion nuclear waste storage facility to be built underground  TimesOnLine (UK) November 9, 2009 Robin Pagnamenta, Energy Editor

Radioactive waste from a new generation of British nuclear power stations will be buried deep underground in a storage facility that could cost up to £18 billion to build, under plans to be announced by the Government today.

Ed Miliband, the Energy Secretary, will give the formal green light to a plan to construct a “deep geological repository” for permanent disposal of the 200 tonnes of high-level waste produced annually by the ten new reactors planned for Britain.

Each reactor will produce about 20 tonnes of highly radioactive spent fuel per year, which will remain lethal for up to 100,000 years.

The store will also provide a permanent place for the stockpile of about 5,000 canisters of high-level nuclear waste from the country’s past civil and military nuclear programmes, which are housed in a temporary facility at the Sellafield plant in West Cumbria.

The Government’s announcement today that it is satisfied with the arrangements it has created for handling Britain’s nuclear waste stockpile will form part of a series of six National Policy Statements on British energy policy designed to fast-track big energy projects — including nuclear power stations,………….

The Government wants a community to volunteer to host it in exchange for a package of jobs and benefits,……… The so-called National Policy Statements are part of a strategy to strip local authorities of the power of approving big energy projects. A new organisation — the Infrastructure Planning Commission — will instead take decisions………………..

Greenpeace said that the Government “still has no environmentally acceptable solution to the problem of dealing with radioactive wastes”.

£18 billion nuclear waste storage facility to be built underground – Times Online

November 9, 2009 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | 1, UK, wastes | antinuclear, nuclear, nuclear costs, nuclear secrecy, nuclear spin, nuclear wastes, radioactive