The Government opened its historic case against the United Kingdom yesterday, seeking an injunction to prevent the MOX fuel production plant at Sellafield from going into operation next month.
The Attorney General, Mr Michael McDowell, said the facility would cause "irreparable harm" to Ireland and would violate Irish rights under the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.
"It will expose us to risks of accidents from the plant and from nuclear tranports. And, we also believe, MOX will expose us to even greater risk of terrorist attacks," he said.
Mr McDowell was speaking at the first day of a two-day hearing at the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea in Hamburg.
"We say Ireland has rights under the 1982 convention which will be violated by the authorisation of the MOX plant," said Mr McDowell.
"First and foremost, we have the right not to be subjected to further radioactive pollution," he said.
He added that the authorisation of the MOX plant would support the continued operation of - and more radioactive discharges from - the existing THORP plant at Sellafield. This would violate Ireland's rights under the convention to require the United Kingdom to prevent radioactive pollution "to the fullest extent possible".
Mr McDowell accused the British government of being deliberately and unacceptably secretive about the MOX plant, scheduled to begin producing plutonium fuel pellets from next month.
Despite numerous requests dating back to 1999, the Government still has no information about how many shipments of nuclear material will travel to and from Sellafield through the Irish Sea. It has not received information about the quantity and type of discharges of radioactive waste from the MOX plant, or information about the operating life of the plant.
The British government was, he said, "essentially uninterested in our views and interests, was not willing to take them into account [and] saw no need for co-operation".
However, the "shared" nature of the Irish Sea obliged Britain to co-operate with Ireland under Articles 123 and 197 of the convention, said Mr McDowell.
Mr Eoin Fitzsimons SC also criticised the British government. He accused Ms Margaret Beckett, the British Minister for Environment and Rural Affairs, of misleading the Irish Government as to the date Britain planned to authorise the MOX plant.
