How much to let me put a nuclear dustbin in your back yard?

The Business Secretary, John Hutton, has ambitions that the United Kingdom should become the number one place for nuclear energy generation in the world. It is the only policy that he thinks that will make up for decades of neglectful energy policies centred around the short term with no vision of the long term problems that a lack of an energy policy will bring. Nuclear generation however creates dangerous nuclear waste which will be dangerous for ten thousand years. Where should the waste go?

If the authorities want to site a landfill waste site close to your home you have no say in the matter beyond planning law. If you oppose the application but it is legitimately granted you have no right of appeal. If the applicant is refused permission, the applicant has a right of appeal. It does not seem fair.

 

If, however, someone wants to site a nuclear dustbin near you, to store radioactive waste, your community will, if new Government proposals are put into law, be rewarded for hosting the nuclear waste dustbin.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The prospect of communities being offered the opportunity to volunteer as hosts for nuclear waste, in return for the economic opportunity that such hosting brings is a departure from traditional ways of organising our communities.

 

The Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly and the Northern Ireland Assembly are all almost certain to refuse permission to store the waste in their jurisdictions and discourage communities from volunteering. That leaves England from which to select deep underground storage sites for the nuclear waste which have already built up. That will mean that England may well become, in time, the world’s biggest nuclear dustbin.

The nuclear waste is presently kept in sealed secure large containers at the nuclear power stations. It is not a long term solution and something must be done to store it more safely.

The expert Committee on Radioactive Waste Management is an independent body that advises on how to dispose of nuclear waste. I tried to find out about them, but much of their website is protected by password, although you can access their publications at http://www.corwm.org.uk/Pages/Lnk_pages/Information.aspx .

The Committe recommended in 2006 that nuclear waste is disposed of in geologically secure and stable underground rock at depths of around a thousand metres. The Committee had to recognise that unlike the USA, Finland and Sweden the United Kingdom had rather avoided the problem of where to store the waste for many years. No one wanted it in their back yard.

Therefore Mr Hutton  suggests that some communities may wish to volunteer to store the waste deep under their communities and in return, not only would those communities get the investment and the jobs that the storage of nuclear waste would create, but they also will get some other unspecified financial incentives which will be negotiated on a case by case basis.

We have already created the nuclear waste and because of the way in which the industry was structured and restructured, the taxpayers will have to pay for the safe storage of the existing nuclear waste.

The operators of the new nuclear power stations are supposed to pay for the disposal of the future waste themselves and I understand that Mr Hutton will ensure that they do this, probably by requiring them to reserve and deposit funds for the safe storage of waste during the operating lifetimes of their plants.

This means that the money to ensure that the waste is stored safely long after the companies that created it may have gone, will be secure, so the final piece of this jigsaw is to persuade communities to agree to store the nuclear waste that we have already generated and the new nuclear from the new power stations, in return for incentives.

It is an interesting concept.

The electricity that the nuclear power stations have created has been consumed throughout the whole country. The risk of the waste storage will not be spread around the country. Instead, individual communities may want to enter into some kind of Dutch auction for pork to secure some money now in return of having the risk of the nuclear waste store permanently.

Well, it will not exactly be forever. It will take 10,000 years for the nuclear waste to decay safely, so the communities who decide to host a nuclear waste dump will not be selling their birthright, but rather leasing it for the next 10,000 years.

I venture to suggest that only poor deprived communities, in desperate need of the money and new jobs are likely to be takers. The wealthy communities (who probably used most of the nuclear energy generated) will want to avoid the risks to health, in case of accident and the risks to depreciating their property values.

I should offer my alternative to the bidding process that Mr Hutton is devising. Nuclear waste needs to be stored in safe geological places and also must be stored in secure places, guarded by highly trained people who are constantly available and on guard.

I would therefore suggest that the waste is stored under the Palace of Westminster and the civil service offices in Whitehall, in London. London Clay offers a very secure depository for the waste and that part of London is always full or armed policeman in massive numbers. They could guard the waste while guarding the Government and there would be no need to incentivise a local community. No one would be too worried if the house prices in Downing Street fell, and that way we could ensure that the Government would genuinely minimise the risks. It is the perfect solution.