Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-05-16-Speech-2-306"
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"en.20000516.12.2-306"2
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"Mr President, I wish to begin by thanking my colleague, Mrs Ahern, for raising this very important issue. No one in this House could have been anything but appalled at the recent events linked to Sellafield, with the falsification of MOX fuel data and the Nuclear Installation Inspectorate's report on the low level of safety procedures at the plant. Following the initial defensive response by BNFL, it was only when that report was published that the real scale of the problem emerged, that the falsification of figures had apparently been going on secretly since 1996.
Wales, like Ireland, has suffered from the radioactive contamination in the Irish Sea, due essentially to Sellafield. There has been a theory about a link between a high incidence of childhood leukaemia, for example, and proximity to the Welsh coastline. Now, added to that, we have a situation where any confidence the public had in the safety of the plant, and therefore their own health and safety, has been destroyed. It is this crisis of credibility in the management of British Nuclear Fuels which may actually bring about the end of reprocessing.
BNFL was determined to press ahead with the Sellafield MOX plant to keep reprocessing going. But one of the reasons why British Energy, which accounted for a third of Sellafield's reprocessing work, decided to shift from that to waste storage was on economic grounds. It was cheaper for them to store waste, and evidence published recently by the nuclear-free local authorities confirms this view.
So, with the problems of the environmental pollution and the effects on health, as well as the issue of cost and the debate about the cost, what justification is left for nuclear processing? It is not worth the risks associated with it and, as the resolution states, the Council, the Commission and Parliament must reconsider this whole issue, including the production of MOX fuel, in the light of recent events and in the interests not only of people in Ireland and Wales but also in the whole of Europe.
British Nuclear Fuels has an obligation to deal with the levels of waste that Mrs Ahern mentioned earlier in the safest way possible. That issue too is one of great concern to me because an area of Wales has been mentioned as a possible site for storing low-level radioactive waste. This is unacceptable. A strategic approach is needed. The nuclear industry has caused enormous damage already and we have to be certain that more and more communities and people's lives are not blighted by its legacy in future."@en1
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