Experts criticise lack of secure storage for nuclear waste

A LEAD box containing a compound of radioactive uranium, and nuclear material stored in a garden shed in Co Meath, are among a number of radioactive finds in Ireland in recent years, the Radiological Protection Institute of Ireland has said.

Responding to EU concerns at more than 1,300 finds of radioactive material worldwide since 1993 – 16 of which constituted weapons grade nuclear material – the institute said finds in the Republic have tended to be “orphan sources”, mislaid or inadvertently dumped by industry and hospitals.

It said such finds amount to less than one per year, but it has repeatedly expressed concern that Ireland has no centralised storage facilities for waste or unwanted equipment from the 1,600 licensed users of radioactive substances. Unwanted or “orphan source” radioactive materials are held at 80 locations.

In its 2007 annual report the institute said the legal responsibility for industrial radioactive materials rested with the owners but such storage represented “an accident waiting to happen”.

The institute was critical of successive governments’ failure to provide a central, secure storage facility for nuclear waste.

Last week at the EU’s Institute for Transuranium Elements in Karlsruhe, Germany, the European Commission unveiled its “atomic detectives”, a team of scientists who carry out “forensic nuclear analysis” on finds.

The scientists, who previously confirmed nuclear material found in Germany had come from Hitler’s second World War atomic programme, this year identified a contaminated shipment of steel detained in Rotterdam as having come from Russia and linked a pipe found in a scrapyard in Karlsruhe to a Soviet nuclear reactor.

The institute said it was concerned at the growing number of nuclear finds and trafficking of material across Europe. But while the scientists instanced border frontier detection and enforcement measures, the EU Commission stressed the storage of nuclear material as well as detection of the illegal movement of nuclear waste was primarily a matter for national governments.

Dr Tom Ryan, director of Regulatory Services at the Radiological Protection Institute, told The Irish Times a high-level group examining these issues was due to present its report to Minister for State Michael Kitt later this year.

The institute said new practice was to require suppliers of equipment which depended on nuclear material to take the equipment back at the end of its useful life.