3:59pm Thursday 9th June 2005
By Sophie Kummer
Nuclear waste in Britain is being left open to terrorist attack because a Government committee is ignoring essential expertise, a Middlesex University professor claimed this week.
Professor David Ball, who resigned from his post as Government adviser on nuclear waste disposal on the Committee on Radioactive Waste Management (CoRWM) last month, said much of Britain was open to terrorist attack if it failed to dispose of its waste effectively.
A professor of risk management at Middlesex, Professor Ball said: "My fear is that much nuclear waste in this country is not stored in the best way and so is leaving us vulnerable to terrorist attack. For instance, someone could fly a plane into it. That risk could be minimised and we jolly well ought to be sorting it out. But my fear is that the committee (CoRWM) has gone down such a wayward path, it may come up with a bad conclusion or its work will be discredited, leaving us open to further delay and costs."
In his letter of resignation to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), Professor Ball described the committee as openly antagonistic to specialist input, whether on science and engineering, economics, ethics'. He wrote: "The fact that CoRWM's process is flawed cannot be undone, and in my opinion it does not provide a model for future decision-making, but a warning."
The most highly radioactive waste in the country which he said could probably fit into a medium-sized house is stored at different sites, and it would cost billions of pounds to dispose of it properly by, for instance, storing it deep underground.
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