British minister's help sought on Sellafield reports

The British government has been asked to help the Radiological Protection Institute of Ireland (RPII) get detailed safety information about radioactive waste storage at the Sellafield reprocessing plant in Cumbria.

The Minister of State with responsibility for nuclear safety, Mr Joe Jacob, wrote on Wednesday to his UK counterpart, the Minister of State for Energy, Mr John Battle. In the letter he asked Mr Battle to "lend his support" to an RPII request for details relating to high level radioactive waste storage tanks at the Sellafield plant.

Mr Jacob said yesterday the documents being sought were "Probability Risk Assessments", which discuss the types of accidents that could occur and what their consequences might be. Sellafield's operators, British Nuclear Fuels Ltd, had refused to give the RPII these documents after requests made in July 1997, Mr Jacob stated. The institute had been refused at that time on what the company described as "commercial grounds".

"The purpose of getting them is so the RPII can come to its own judgement of the risks associated with the high level radiation storage tanks," Mr Jacob said.

The RPII has also written directly to BNFL according to its chief executive, Dr Tom O'Flaherty. He said the institute had been refused these documents in 1997. This approach had been made via officials of the two governments, but had been denied by BNFL he said. "Their reason was commercial confidentiality."

The RPII request had arrived, a BNFL spokesman confirmed yesterday but no decision had yet been made about the request. "We are considering our response," he said.

The focus of the correspondence is on the stainless steel tanks which contain the most radioactive waste currently stored on the Sellafield site.