Decisions in the balance The need for a public inquiry over THORP

More than 64,000 individuals, 112 local authorities, and the Governments of ten countries are worried about the proposal to open THORP (Thermal Oxide Reprocessing Plant), a British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL) plant in Cumbria which is destined to receive and treat nuclear waste from all over the world. Experts cannot agree about the benefits of the project, and even its business prospects are in doubt. There are plenty of reasons to believe that massive radioactive contamination of the environment, increased deaths from cancer, and a legacy of dangerous waste will result from THORP. What will come out of THORP, if it opens, will present far greater disposal problems than what will go into it. The reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel actually mixes the radioactivity into many different chemical and physical forms, spreading the contamination through everything involved in the process - solvents, acids, containers, filters etc. According to a report by the Consulting Engineer John Large, the effect is to increase the volume of nuclear waste by as much as 189 times compared with the original spent fuel. Some of this waste - that contaminated with plutonium - remains radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years, leaving Britain a legacy of life-threatening waste management problems for generations to come. Only a public inquiry can get to the bottom of the complex issues involved in THORP. And only an independent public inquiry can truly fulfil our Government's own policy demands with respect to this kind of decision. In the Government's Respond to the Environment Committee's report, 1986, it is their stated policy to prove 'justification' for radioactive waste production. This means the Government cannot authorise increases in radioactive discharges without being sure that the benefits of the process outweigh the risks. With THORP, BNFL want to increase its radioactive discharges into the environment by staggering amounts. Their own figures show there will be a 1100% increase in discharges into the air, and a 900% increase in discharges into the sea. With such a 'cost' on one side, nothing short of a full and independent public inquiry should be relied upon to evaluate the so-called 'benefits'Available from British Library Document Supply Centre-DSC:9237.7505(11) / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreSIGLEGBUnited Kingdo