Liquid Nuclear Waste Tanks

EDM number 1220 in 1993-94, proposed by Paul Flynn on 12/05/1994.

That this House notes with grave concern the implications of accidental or malicious damage to the containment of the heat generating highly active liquid waste tanks serving the THORP and MAGNOX reprocessing plants at Sellafield, which could result in very long lived radioactive contamination to the United Kingdom and Europe, 10 to 100 times worse than the Chernobyl disaster; further notes the liquid wastes to be discharged from THORP will be eight to 10 times more active than that discharged from MAGNOX fuel reprocessing, and recognises the risk of such a catastrophic failure to the highly active liquid waste tanks could be greatly reduced by their replacement with passive cooling best available waste management techniques; and therefore urges the Government to insist that BNFL use its profits from reprocessing foreign nuclear fuels to make the necessary investment in new liquid waste containment thereby reducing the risks to the public, environment and future generations to the lowest achievable level.

This motion has been signed by a total of 37 MPs.