Mark Dearey, former Green Party Senator and long time campaigner against nuclear reprocessing at Sellafield is calling on the Irish Government to use its stakeholder status with the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority to to ascertain the level of threat posed by those arrested near Sellafield yesterday.

"The danger posed by Sellafield should the unimaginable happen is nothing short of catastrophic for this country. The industry operates on the promise that it can forever and a day keep fissile material contained from the open environment. But it is a promise it cannot keep and about once every 20 years the unimaginable actually happens as we saw recently in Japan."

"It has always been my contention that the industry is built on an hubristic faith that all eventualities can be accounted for and we can see this is not so. As I said stated in the Seanad back in March, Sellafield poses an overwhelming threat to Ireland in the event of a nuclear attack especially given that B215 where the liquid waste tanks are located are not aircraft proof. They contain two tones of caesium. The Chernobyl disaster released 26 kilos of the stuff causing a massive Europe wide health scare and a severe generational impact regionally."

"We in Ireland must pressure the British Government to do all in its power to make Sellafield safe. This means proper inventories of fissile material, proofing the Highly Active waste tanks against terrorist attack and ending reprocessing which is leading to a continued build up of nuclear material from round the world one hundred and twenty miles from the Louth coastline. The Government call for a stress test on Sellafield following the Fukoshima accident is akin to stress testing Anglo Irish Bank. The case is overwhelming. Only a decision to shut it and a plan to do so will prove to be adaquate now.

Ends.

Editors note.
Extract from Seanad statements on Fukoshima on March 24th.

I called for a debate on nuclear power on three occasions in the year I sat in this House, sometimes in the face of speeches in favour of nuclear power. On one occasion, I spoke at length about the number of quangos and regulatory and supervisory bodies required to put order on the industry. We can see now what happens when that order breaks down. To put in context the ongoing threat posed by the industry to Ireland, I remind Senators that whereas 26 kg of caesium 137 were released across Europe when the core of the reactor in Chernobyl melted down, the waste tanks which store liquid nuclear fuel rods in Sellafield contain more than two tonnes of this material. The caesium is stored in 21 tanks in a building, B215, which is not secure in the event of an aircraft strike. The unimaginable has happened in Japan and it can happen again. The call by the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government to stress test Sellafield is like calling for a stress test on Anglo Irish Bank because it is a proven case. We need to be more firm in seeking an end to nuclear reprocessing. Sellafield will not and cannot go away and it needs to be managed effectively and secured against the unimaginable. I ask the Government to raise its game on this issue and seek far more than a mere stress test.

Mark Dearey was one of 4 plaintiffs who took the STAD court action against Sellafield from 1994 to 2005.
He is a former Greem Party Senator and member of Louth County Council.