The Big Question: What is the best solution to dispose of Britains nuclear waste?
Why ask now? David Miliband, the Environment Secretary, announced this week that the country’s most dangerous radioactive waste, accumulated over the past half century, will be buried in deep underground facilities. He said these repositories will be built in “geologically suitable” areas and with the support of local authorities. Mr Milliband also promised that the process of deciding where these deep underground facilities are built will be transparent. He said the Government will produce an implementation framework for consultation next year. Haven’t we heard this before? Deep disposal has been discussed for more than 30 years but successive governments have failed to grasp the nettle. As a result there has been no coherent plan to deal with waste in the long term. Instead we have had several inquiries, many reports and a mish-mash of stop-gap measures that involved short-term storage at the surface or shallow disposal of the many kinds of lower-level radioactive waste built up over
