An internal UK Nirex memorandum, leaked to Friends of the Earth, confirms that the nuclear waste management company cannot proceed with its plans for an underground laboratory at Sellafield until it has 10 to 100 times more data. [1] This is despite spending£200 million on site investigations at Sellafield to date.

The memorandum describes Nirex's difficulties in producing a report, Nirex 97, which will update the scientific information it presented to the 1995 Public Inquiry.[2] The memorandum acknowledges that Nirex "may struggle to make a case for [a nuclear waste dump at] the site" and goes on to state that its scientists cannot agree on how to interpret its scientific data, "there is still a gap between the modellers and hydrogeologists".

The damming memorandum sets out three options available to Nirex if it wants to proceed with proposals to build a nuclear waste dump deep underneath Sellafield. These are (i)do more "site characterisation" experiments before rock laboratory construction, (which is the next stage in its plans to build a nuclear waste dump at the site); (ii) adopt "a different approach to modelling" in the hope that this will produce answers to support its case or ;(iii)accept that the site is "inherently not characterisable to the requisite level".

Dr Patrick Green, Friends of the Earth's Senior Energy, Nuclear and Climate Campaigner said:

"What this memo says is that Nirex must either spend hundreds of millions of pounds on more research, cook the books or clear off. They have lost the argument and must now accept defeat. If they try to manipulate the data they already have, we will expose them."

The leaked memorandum proves that Friends of the Earth's case to the public inquiry was correct. Friends of the Earth commissioned seven leading scientific experts who argued that Nirex needed to conduct at least 10 more years of site investigations before it could proceed to construct the rock laboratory.

The Nirex memorandum describes senior Nirex scientists' concern that without more data they cannot reliably model the underground water flow paths in the highly fractured rock underneath Sellafield. This model is needed as a control to enable Nirex to predict the impact of rock laboratory construction and enable it to interpret the experiment carried out in it. Nirex evidence to the Public Inquiry claimed that it already had sufficient data to enable it to do this. These models will be used by Nirex to predict how radioactive leaks from the dump will behave.

Friends of the Earth will today write to the Secretary of State for the Environment, John Gummer, requesting that he reopen the Public Inquiry in the light of this leaked memorandum.

NOTES TO EDITORS:

[1]    The leaked memorandum is from John Holmes to Alan Hooper and is dated 10 December 1996.

[2]     Nirex plans for an underground rock laboratory were examined at a local planning inquiry which ended in February 1996. The Inspectors report was submitted to the Department of the Environment (DOE) in December and a decision from the Secretary of State on whether Nirex should be granted planning permission is expected imminently.