barrow in furness

Sweden halts nuke cargo
Published on 02/11/2007

SWEDEN has slapped a ban on shipments of nuclear waste to Sellafield, losing the West Cumbria nuke site a lucrative storage contract.

Minister of the Environment, Andreas Carlgren, told a meeting of the Nordic Council Environment and Natural Resources Committee in Oslo: “I am in a position to promise that our transports of nuclear waste will cease.”

In future all nuclear waste will be stored in Sweden and no waste from Swedish nuclear plants will be processed outside the country.

One of the reasons given was that Sweden feared “danger at sea” or “a terror attack on one of the boats”, according to Norway’s Asmund Kristoffersen, who chaired the Oslo summit.

Mr Kristoffersen added: “I asked the Swedish minister what he intended to do about shipments of Swedish nuclear waste by sea. His response was a really positive surprise. Sweden has shipped some waste, which is between 30 and 40 years old, to Sellafield, and it will have to be processed there because it can be dangerous to move waste several times.

“Sweden had also committed to taking back an amount equivalent to the material it has sent to Sellafield.

“I am personally delighted with this. I have visited Sellafield several times and I am of the opinion that as little as possible should be stored there.

“It is best for the Nordic environment.”

Mr Kristoffersen said that such shipments put the whole of the Nordic region at peril.

Finland had already pledged that each of that country’s nuclear power plants has to process the nuclear fuel and nuclear waste it generates itself.

With Sweden’s decision, none of the Nordic countries now use Sellafield as a storage facility, but it is still receives most of Japan’s nuclear waste.