Nobody should be under any illusion - the case being heard in The Hague this week will not lead to the closure of Sellafield, writes Frank McDonald, Environment Editor.
They lined up facing each other in the ornately decorated Peace Palace in The Hague yesterday morning - Ireland on one side, behind a green-clothed table, marked CLAIMANT and Britain at a similar table opposite, marked DEFENDANT. And the issue between them was freedom of information on the highly-sensitive nuclear industry.
The Peace Palace is the headquarters of the International Bureau of the Permanent Court of Arbitration. It was built between 1907 and 1912 with funding from Andrew Carnegie, and it houses the largest library in the world on international law. It also provides a forum for states to resolve differences amicably.
Over many years, but particularly since 1999, Ireland has sought detailed information on the controversial MOX plant at Sellafield. The plant was designed to reprocess spent fuel from nuclear reactors - mainly in Germany and Japan - to produce a mixed oxide fuel containing both uranium dioxide and plutonium dioxide.
What the Government is seeking is a ruling under the 1992 Ospar Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment of the North-East Atlantic that it is entitled to the full versions of two partially suppressed British reports. One deals with the economic justification for the £470 million MOX plant and the other on its likely environmental impact on the Irish Sea.
The British Government has refused to release these reports in an unexpurgated form on grounds of "commercial confidentiality", fearing this would expose British Nuclear Fuels plc, a company which it wholly owns, to competitors such as the French nuclear reprocessing facility at Cap de la Hague, in Normandy.
"The information we are seeking is necessary to allow Ireland to form an independent assessment of the impact of the MOX plant on the Irish Sea and to determine whether the UK is compliant with their legal obligations to ensure that the new facilities are economically justified," said the Minister for the Environment, Mr Cullen.
Before a three-man tribunal, Britain and Ireland will slug it out all week in a gentlemanly fashion, arguing about whether the suppressed sections of the reports by PA Consultants and Arthur D. Little should be permitted to enter the public domain.
Mr Cullen said Ireland wanted access to the "core facts" about the MOX plant before deciding what other legal avenues it can pursue to have Sellafield closed down. Such avenues might be provided by the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea or the European Court of Justice (under the 1996 Euratom Directive).
Nobody should be under any illusion - the case being heard in The Hague this week will not lead to Sellafield's closure. The British government is too wedded to nuclear reprocessing and the nuclear industry in general to give in on such a fundamental issue. All it might do is provide ammunition for a long-term legal battle. The case is of international significance, however.
If the tribunal finds in Ireland's favour, it could have a major impact on the nuclear industry worldwide, requiring it to disclose full information on its activities and plans, both to the population of countries where new facilities are planned and to neighbouring countries too.
That, in any case, is Ireland's hope, even expectation. And with Britain gearing up for a new round of investment in nuclear power plants, it could not be coming at a more apposite time - assuming, of course, that the tribunal finds in favour of the Government and directs Britain to release all the information sought on MOX.