Jeremy L. Dillon
RW Monitor
4/10/2015
The United Kingdom’s Parliament last week passed a bill that could potentially take away a host community’s ability to veto any proposed high-level nuclear waste repository. The bill gives the Secretary of State for Energy the power to choose a location without local interference by declaring the effort one of the “nationally significant infrastructure projects,” the bill said. According to reports from the Guardian, the vote for the bill passed late on the day before parliament was scheduled to depart for the country’s general election. The Labour Party abstained in the vote, indicating that with the election occurring after the vote, the change in leadership may not want a switch in how the siting process will work, the Guardian reported.
Previously, the United Kingdom had been in talks with Copeland in West Cumbria County to host a repository, but those stalled when Cumbria County’s Council voted against hosting the facility last year due to concerns with the geology. The vote effectively vetoed the facility, sending the U.K. Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) back to the beginning in terms of siting. The DECC had previously agreed that both the county of Cumbria and the borough of Copeland, where the site would be and who voted to host the site, had to both agree to site the repository.
The bill still requires that the government do its due diligence in siting a repository that meets public health and safety. According to the bill language, “the part of the facility where radioactive waste is to be disposed of is expected to be constructed at a depth of at least 200 meters beneath the surface of the ground or seabed, and the natural environment which surrounds the facility is expected to act, in combination with any engineered measures, to inhibit the transit of radionuclides from the part of the facility where radioactive waste is to be disposed of to the surface.”
DECC Had Outlined New Consent-Based Approach
The DECC released a white paper last year outlining the nation’s new approach to siting a geological disposal facility for the nation’s high-level nuclear waste. The white paper aims to rejuvenate the nation’s siting search after the planned site in West Cumbria was blocked. The new plan calls for more public volunteerism and a consent-based approach earlier in the process while also incorporating more interaction between a potential community and Radioactive Waste Management Limited (RWM), the UK’s developer of the facility. In an effort to improve on the failure at West Cumbria, the white paper attempts to keep the public informed on the siting process while gauging public opinion during the process as an indicator of the community’s willingness to host the facility.
