Environmental campaigners claim a new £50m nuclear waste store will increase risk to the public from radioactive discharges.

Wendy MacLeod-Gilford, of Blewbury Environmental Research Group, claimed much of the waste going into the new store at Harwell would come from reactors being decommissioned at UKAEA Winfrith, including nuclear fuel.

And she predicted the UKAEA would have to build another medium-level waste store by the year 2010, and another after that.

The Atomic Energy Authority, which denies the store will handle nuclear fuel, says it has been built to the most stringent safety standards, providing safe storage of waste for at least 40 years.

The store, part of a five-acre complex, was officially opened by Dr Roy Nelson, the UKAEA's director of Dounreay, who initiated the project when he was at Harwell.

The UKAEA says the waste is mainly from Harwell, with a small amount from hospitals and industry.

Much of the waste has been stored in drums in older buildings on the Harwell site.

Prior to1982 it was taken out to sea and dumped in the Atlantic, until an international ban on sea dumping was introduced.

The UKAEA planned to bury the waste in deep underground vaults. But the Government refused consent for a pilot scheme to construct an underground store near Sellafield, in Cumbria.

The decision, taken after extensive consultation, means that intermediate waste will have to be kept in buildings like the new store at Harwell for the foreseeable future.

Story date: Thursday 11 February

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