A committee of the United Kingdom Parliament on Tuesday declined to rule out construction of a geologic repository for nuclear waste under one of the nation’s nuclear parks.
The House of Commons’ Business, Energy, and Industrial Strategy Committee published its findings regarding the government’s draft national policy statement for geologic disposal infrastructure, issued in January.
Lawmakers said they focused on four issues of particular concern in siting and developing the disposal site: whether national parks and “areas of outstanding natural beauty” (AONB) should be excluded; whether waste from future nuclear facilities should go into the repository; how local consent should be addressed in the national policy statement; and the document’s connection to the “Industrial Strategy to deliver socioeconomic benefits to host communities.”
“We decided against adding an exclusionary criterion for National Parks and AONBs as in our view it is right for safety matters to prevail over environmental concerns in this case,” the panel said. “Although we agree that major developments should not be allowed in designated areas except under exceptional circumstances, we believe that existing planning legislation and the NPS contain sufficient safeguards against intrusive developments and environmental damage in National Parks and AONBs.”
This did not go over well with environmental organizations and some other members of Parliament, the London Guardian reported. “Our national parks are precious national assets with, at least theoretically, the highest level of protection through the planning system,’ according to Ruth Bradshaw, policy and research manager at the Campaign for National Parks. “The proposed nuclear storage facility is completely contrary to the purposes of national parks.”
In its latest accounting, in 2016, the United Kingdom had 4.6 million cubic meters of radioactive waste by packaged volume, with over 90 percent classified as low-level waste and very-low-level waste. Higher-activity waste — covering high-level, intermediate-level, and low-level material — would be placed at least 200 meters below ground, according to the draft national policy statement.
The project is expected to cost £12 billion.
