Mr President, the report on safety at Sellafield, published by the UK Nuclear Installations Inspectorate, is a damning indictment of safety at the plant and falsification of safety checks there. In mid-February Chief Inspector Laurence Williams said that he himself would pull the plug on the THORP reprocessing plant if his safety recommendations were not acted on. However, it is clear from his own report that BNFL cannot be trusted. The response to previous recommendations by the NII was to ignore them. Indeed, I have documents showing this to be the case as far back as 1981. This shows arrogance, even when they are called to account. What are we to make of the fact that this investigation by the UK Nuclear Inspectorate resulted from a press report in the UK Independent, following which the UK Government sent in a posse, as it were – the Nuclear Inspectorate. Surely it should have been the other way around. We received continuous reassurance regarding the safety of EU nuclear installations, so why does it need a press investigation to alert Member State governments to serious safety issues? It is time that the citizens of Europe received detailed answers to the questions of the effect on safety and the environment of the falsification of data in the MOX facility at the BNFL Sellafield site – falsification that has been ongoing for some years – because of the seriousness of the questions it raises for the safety of MOX fuel in use and for the nuclear installation's safety generally. It also raises questions for the transport of nuclear material such as MOX fuel and, indeed, for nuclear safeguards because of the production of plutonium stockpiles. Indeed, I would ask what level of Euratom safeguard efforts, personalities, site visits etc. has been deployed on that site since 1996 since when, we are told, reprocessing in the UK has been performed under Euratom safeguards? I questioned Chief Inspector Laurence Williams in committee on whether the inspectorate staff in the UK were going native and imbibing the cultures that they are there to control. He gave me a serious answer. However, what about Euratom inspectors? Can we trust them? Do they also imbibe the cultures that they are there to control? I would also ask you to deal seriously with the harmonisation of minimum standards, because here we received conflicting answers in committee. I am also directly concerned with the effects of reprocessing on neighbouring states, such as my own, where radioactive contamination from Sellafield has been found on the east coast beaches, in particular Carlingford Lough, where I grew up. Local people often ask me what the EU is going to do about it. I can give them very short answers. Denmark and other Nordic states are also concerned at the radioactive contamination of their seas and fishing grounds from reprocessing at Sellafield. I believe the scandal of abuse of safety at Sellafield is a European question. In particular, the high-level waste tanks pose a serious, on-going risk to the east coast of Ireland because of the risk of a release of large amounts of radiation should the cooling tanks overheat. The Nuclear Inspectorate's report stressed that the amount of high-level liquid waste continues to increase faster than BNFL can deal with it. The THORP reprocessing plant produces continually more waste. It is this plant that the inspectorate threatened with legal sanctions if the backlog is not cleared. Reprocessing by its nature produces large quantities of liquid waste. For more than 40 years high-level liquid waste has been stored in tanks at Sellafield under constant cooling. It is now urgent that we cease reprocessing and that the high-level waste tanks be shifted to passive containment such as vitrification. Even then, they will still be highly radioactive for more than 50 years. The problem for BNFL is that the amount of high-level liquid waste produced by reprocessing continues to increase faster than it can deal with it. The NII would like to see the minimisation of the amount of high-level liquid waste stored in order to reduce the potential hazard. I would suggest that this could be done by ending reprocessing now. In committee I also queried whether a culture of corruption had spread to the independent quality assurance verification by Lloyd's Quality Assurance who verify that BNF procedures comply with health and safety requirements. Last September it published a report stating that BNFL has high-quality management in terms of health, safety and the environment. As this was clearly inaccurate, according to the regulator's report, this independent verification now lacks credibility. I have already talked about going native in regard both to Euratom and the UK inspectorate. This is the polite euphemism for corruption, and that is what we must control here. The Chief Inspector recommended that the high-level waste tanks and the serious risk resulting from the inability of BNFL to make them passively safe through vitrification was an urgent issue. I would ask what does 'urgent' mean in this context? Must we wait for years more of serious risk to the health and environment of people in the British Isles and Europe generally?

Political group: Verts-ALE