Despite fierce opposition by Britain to head off criticism at
the OSPAR meeting (1), the UK was forced to accept the concerns of
Member States over radioactive discharges from the nuclear
reprocessing plant at Sellafield. The dispute at OSPAR resulted
from the UK's failure to meet its commitments over the past five
years to reduce radioactive discharges (2).
The discharge of the radioactive waste 'Technetium-99' was, in
particular, the subject of intense negotiation at the meeting. In
the last week, after six months of prevarication, the UK
Environment Minister Margaret Beckett was pressured into writing to
the state-owned company British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL) to ask them
for a nine month moratorium on Technetium-99 discharges. It is
expected that research and development will take place over these
months to see if technology is feasible to stop the discharges by
March 2004.
"This decision may come back to haunt the UK", said Greenpeace's
Simon Reddy at OSPAR. "The UK Government will be dreading March
2004. They either have to ensure the technology is in place or
announce a resumption of the radioactive technetium
discharges."
The UK only moved on this issue because a coalition of countries
(Norway, Denmark, Iceland, Ireland, The Netherlands and Sweden)
refused to allow Britain to go unchallenged. "The lack of progress
in reducing discharges, due to the intransigence of the UK and, to
a lesser extent, France, meant that this OSPAR meeting was not able
to celebrate significant reduction in radioactive discharges to
European waters," Reddy concluded.
Greenpeace, however, welcomed the adoption of guidelines on
offshore wind farm development, which will facilitate and encourage
the development of clean renewable energy.
Notes: (1) OSPAR Convention deals with marine pollution of the North East Atlantic and North Sea. Member states are: Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the European Commission. (2) Five years ago in Portugal OSPAR Ministers agreed to "work towards achieving further substantial reductions of discharges, by the year 2000" and to "progressive and substantial reductions in radioactive discharges to achieve by the year 2020 close to zero concentrations in the marine environment above historic levels". The discharges from Sellafield have increased since 1998 and are set to double in the coming years.