Nuclear Waste: The 1,000-Year Fudge--UK (nuke industry plans)

[Gloria]

Up now in the new World Media Watch at http://www.zianet.com/insightanalytical
Tomorrow at Buzzflash.com

3//The Independent, UK 12 June 2005

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/environment/story.jsp?story=646245



NUCLEAR WASTE: THE 1,000-YEAR FUDGE

By Geoffrey Lean, Environment Editor



Secret plans to postpone solving Britain's nuclear waste crisis for up to 1,000 years are being drawn up by the nuclear industry, The Independent on Sunday can reveal.



The government-owned British Nuclear Fuels is developing a scheme for indefinitely storing the intensely dangerous material in giant "millennium domes" around Britain, leaving it for generations far into the future to work out what to do with it.



The scheme - to be floated at a closed meeting of nuclear experts and local authority officials in London this week - runs counter to conventional wisdom. Most experts insist that the safest way of dealing with highly radioactive wastes is to bury them at least 900 feet underground. Storing them increases the chances that they will leak out, leading to health risks and making them vulnerable to terrorists.



But the idea is gaining support in Whitehall, following 30 years of failure to find a disposal site in Britain. Ministers insist that plans for dealing with the waste must be agreed before any more nuclear power stations are built.


(snip)


"They look exactly like the Millennium Dome," said one top official who has seen the plans. "And they seem just as bad an idea."

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[Demeter]

1. For 60 Years Nobody Has Found A Solution

Nuclear weapons, nuclear power, both are more trouble than they are worth. They leave a permanent poison on the land wherever they are put. They pollute the gene pool, sicken the living, and do no honor to the dead. Leave the radioactivity in the ground.