The British government is using British taxpayers money to underwrite Sellafield’s massive nuclear clean-up bill while at the same time hoping to off-load the core business to the private sector, the Green Party claimed today.
Party leader Mr Trevor Sargent expressed his anger at the British government’s announcement that they plan to break up the Sellafield British Nuclear Fuels operation.
Doning Street today published plans for a new authority, the Liabilities Management Authority (LMA), to take over the cost of dealing safely.
Under the arrangement, the Sellafield nuclear reprocessing complex and other ageing facilities will be transferred from British Nuclear Fuels Limited (BNFL), to the LMA which will operate the sites under contract. The clean up programme is estimated to cost nearly £48 billion sterling.
Transferring the clean-up operation to LMA is designed to free BNFL up for part-privatisation in two years time.
Mr Sargent called this arrangement a "political ruse" to ensure that state-owned BNFL will be in better financial shape for privatisation.
"If BNFL were to pay out the huge sums required to manage and store nuclear waste at sites like Sellafield, it would be technically bankrupt," he said.
A ship carrying nuclear material bound for Sellafield left a Japanese port under tight security today, amid protests from anti-nuclear activists who said the cargo could be at risk of theft or attack.
