DEEP GEOLOGICAL DISPOSAL OF RADIOACTIVE-WASTE - ASSESSING THE ENVIRONMENTAL-IMPACT

Recent legislation in the UK has highlighted environmental protection as a material consideration in preparing and assessing planning applications for large developments. A repository for radioactive waste is an Annex 1 project under the European Council Directive ont eh effects of certain projects on the environment. An Environmental Statement is therefore mandatory. The Government White Paper, This Common Inheritance,1 called for environmental information to be made available to the public, to tell people the facts and to give them the opportunity to make their views known. This paper describes the non-nuclear environmental studies that Nirex is carrying out in characterizing Sellafield as tis preferred site for a repository. The work is continuing, in parallel with geological investigations and safety assessments, to assess the scale and significance of impacts on the local environment and community. This directly supports the company's stated intention of developing a Rock Characterization Facility and, if the site continues to show potential by meeting all the long-term safety requriements, a deep underground repository for intermediate-level and long lived low-level radioactive waste. Local authorities and many organizations having an interest in pollution control, conservation, landscape and other environmental matters have been consulted. This shows that Nirex is abiding by the requirements of This Common Inheritance, by involving the public in the determinations of Sellafield's overall suitability for waste disposal for the environmental, cultural, social and economic points of view.