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UK believes that “God will provide” an answer to nuclear waste?

Nuclear waste moved off the agenda Environmental Research Web (UK) 16 Nov 09 The governments new draft National Policy Statement on nuclear power, indicating which issues the new Infrastructure Planning Commission (IPC) should take on board, and which it can ignore, contains this remarkable statement:

“The Government is satisfied that effective arrangements will exist to manage and dispose of the waste that will be produced from new nuclear power stations. As a result the IPC need not consider this question.”

The draft Statement goes on to say that ‘Geological disposal will be preceded by safe and secure interim storage’.So it seems, the waste issue is all in hand and we needn’t bother too much about it, or any problems with the much more active spent fuel that the new reactors’ high fuel ‘burn up’ approach will create. Despite the fact that the highly active spent fuel is to be kept on site at the plant for perhaps several decades, that is evidently not something IPC will have to consider in its assessment of whether the proposed plants can go ahead. Instead the IPC will just focus on any conventional local planning and environmental impact issues that may emerge in relation to the 10 new nuclear plants that the government has now backed.
Quite apart from the issue of on-site spent fuel storage, there are plenty of other issues to discuss. For example, the risk of flooding in the years ahead, as climate change begins to bite.  Dungeness was dropped off the original 11 strong list, due to local eco-issues, including, we hear, concerns about flood risks. That leaves the following, all of them also coastal sites, although allegedly less at risk : Bradwell, Hartlepool, Heysham, Hinkley Point, Oldbury, Sellafield, Sizewell and Wylfa, all existing sites, plus newcomers, Braystones, and Kirksanton, both in Cumbria.

Nuclear waste moved off the agenda (environmentalresearchweb blog) – environmentalresearchweb

November 16, 2009 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | 1, UK, wastes | antinuclear, nuclear, nuclear costs, nuclear weapons, radiation, radioactive, wastes