AN attempt to ensure public support for the siting of Britain鈥檚 next nuclear waste repository has fallen prey to the conflict and confusion it was supposed to dispel. In a report published last month, a group set up by environment secretary John Gummer recommends a procedure for choosing the site of the repository which will follow strict rules and be open to the public. But the report has been undermined by dissidents within the group.
Last May, as part of the government鈥檚 nuclear review, Gummer asked a team drawn from two of its nuclear advisory committees to study ways of choosing a site for a repository that would inspire 鈥減ublic confidence鈥�.
Central to the group鈥檚 thinking is a new, quantitative system for assessing the suitability of sites. This would translate the geological and hydrogeological properties of an area into a series of simple indices. The groundwater return index (GRI), for example, is a measure of the time it takes for water to percolate back to the surface from an underground repository. A cutoff point would be set for the GRI, below which the public鈥檚 risk of exposure to any radioactivity in the water would be unacceptable. When all the indices are combined, the risk of dying from a radiation-induced cancer should not exceed 1 in a million per year.
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But after the panel sent its report to Gummer, the two members from the Advisory Committee on the Safety of Nuclear Installations, sent him a separate report outlining a different view.
The dissidents argue that it will be impossible to define cutoff levels for the indices that accurately reflect the safety of a repository; They say that a decision should be made on qualitative grounds, specifying, for example, only certain types of rocks and 鈥渓ong鈥� groundwater return times.
The others, who are members of the Radioactive Waste Management Advisory Committee (RWMAC), stand by the original report. 鈥淲e compromised and then they refused to go along with that compromise,鈥� says Martin Courtis, of RWMAC.
The report rules out a qualitative system because it is not 鈥渢ransparent鈥� to the public. A quantitative method 鈥渁voids the criticism of a moving target adjusted when required to meet changing conditions鈥�, it says.
The dissidents argue that the screening should take cost into account as well as safety. Otherwise, they say, the chosen sites 鈥渃ould all be situated in the most inconvenient parts of the country with other acceptably safe sites ruled out鈥�.