Cumbrian's will be outraged by the Royal Society's Study Group recommendation that nuclear high-level waste (HLW) should be disposed of in Nirex's planned nuclear waste dump at Sellafield, Friends of the Earth said today. This recommendation is contained in the Royal Society Study Group review of Nirex's research programme published today.[1] The review was commissioned by UK Nirex Ltd.

Dr Patrick Green, Friends of the Earth's Radioactive Waste Campaigner, said today;

"The Study Groups recommendation that HLW should be dumped at Sellafield is scientifically flawed - a rare event given the Royal Society's status and reputation. The people of Cumbria will justifiably outraged to when they find out what has been recommended."

Friends of the Earth considers that two of the Study Group's recommendations cannot be substantiated by the Group's analysis of Nirex's research programme.

The report states that "there has been no detailed published account of the scientific basis for the choice of Sellafield"[2] and identifies "a number of areas" where Nirex's "scientific understanding is not yet sufficiently advanced" to enable the safety of the proposed nuclear dump to be proven.[3]

Inexplicably, this has not led the Study Group to question in any way Nirex's choice of the Sellafield site. Instead, the Study Group proposes that the Nirex dump should ultimately be extended to take HLW.[4] HLW was outside the Study Group's terms of reference and the report fails to present any scientific justification for this recommendation.

The Study Groups recommendation that Nirex's proposed underground rock laboratory "should now be constructed" is equally scientifically indefensible.[5] The Study Group reveals that Nirex's most up-to-date work "has failed to yield a simple relationship" which explains how groundwater moves in the fractured rock underneath Sellafield.[6]

The Government's Radioactive Waste Management Advisory Committee (RWMAC) warned in 1992 that construction of Nirex's rock laboratory will destroy the groundwater flow patterns (the base hydrogeological regime).[7] It therefore recommended that the pattern of groundwater movements must be established before the proposed rock laboratory is constructed.

At its press conference, the Study Group refused to comment on this.

Dr Patrick Green concluded;

"The Study Group's recommendation that Nirex's rock laboratory should now be constructed is beyond belief and will do no credit to the Royal Society's reputation."

ENDS

NOTES TO EDITORS

[1] The Royal Society, Disposal of Radioactive Wastes in Deep Repository's, Report of a Study Group, November 1994 [2] See note 1, p29 [3] See note 1, p2 [4] See note 1, p7 [5] The Royal Society, The Royal Society's Report on Nirex, Press Release, 15 November 1994 [6] See note 1, p110 [7] RWMAC, Press Release, p1, 21 October 1992