Sir, - Consecutive British governments have been wholly mischievous when it comes to the issue of their policy intentions with regard to nuclear activities at the Sellafield Plant. In 1993, the Conservative Party sanctioned the building of the Thorp nuclear processing facility which has resulted in higher levels of radioactive materials in the Irish Sea. Now the British Government under the Labour Party has sanctioned the construction of the new Mox Plant worth £300 million pounds. This will create nuclear fuel from plutonium which has been separated from waste fuel at the existing Thorp plant.
This decision is verging on the incomprehensible, in light of commitments given by the British Government at the recent meeting in July of this year of the Ospar Convention in Lisbon. This convention deals with sea pollution and the British Government signed up to extensively reducing the level of pollution from nuclear operations into the Irish Sea over the next 20 years.
On the one hand, the British Government is trying to tell us that it is committed to reducing the level of pollutants into the Irish Sea, while at the same time, it sanctions a further expansion of nuclear operations at the Sellafield plant itself.
Surely the time has now come for the European Commission to carry out an independent root and branch examination of all the public health and environmental consequences of the Sellafield nuclear plant, under powers given to the European Commission by the Euratom Treaty of 1957. - Yours, etc., Jim Fitzsimons, MEP,
Dublin Rd., Navan, Co. Meath.