British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL), which operates the Sellafield nuclear reprocessing plant, has been criticised by the advertising watchdog in Britain for making environmental claims.
The company boasted in a newspaper advertisement that its management of the site in Cumbria meant "the future of the environment is in safe hands".
A member of the public who contacted the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) complained that BNFL "could not predict what would happen to radioactive waste in thousands of years to come" and that nuclear plants were a "terrorist risk".
The advertisement, which appeared in a local newspaper, pictured a butterfly rising from a hand and began with the words: "The Sellafield Team cares passionately about the safety of its workforce, the local community and the environment." BNFL said the advert was designed to show that waste reprocessing and clean- up work on the Sellafield site over the next 50 years would involve "no harm to the environment".
The ASA that ruled the advertisement was "misleading" because BNFL "could not predict the effects of the Sellafield nuclear power station on the environment". BNFL said it had no plans to use the advertisement again.
It is not the first time BNFL has been sanctioned by the ASA. In February 1999, the watchdog upheld a complaint about an advertisement which claimed the company had "perfected ways to deal with all types of nuclear waste". - (PA)