On 21st October 1975, the Daily Mirror front page had splashed across it the banner headline “Plan to make Britain World’s nuclear dustbin” shock report on our lethal imports. This so shocked Labour Government ministers that two left winger Cabinet members (both now deceased) Peter Shore, the environment secretary, and energy secretary Tony Benn, [both having just lost the first Brexit referendum, having campaigned to leave] that they got together to change national policy and ban the import of radioactive waste, and insisted any imported to date must be returned to the country of origin under a return-to-sender determination, which the Observer’s former doyenne of environmental reporters, Geoff Lean, reported in January and February of 1976. On 23 January 2019 the regulations pasted below were passed into law ‘on the nod’ in Parliament. Up until now, importing radioactive was into Britain was not permitted. ( except in exceptional circumstances, such as removal of bomb-useable radioactive waste materials from unstable regions to stop terrorists getting their hands on it, as happened with an emergency airfreighting of such nuclear materials from Georgia to Scotland a decade ago). But these new regulations will allow that to happen in future, commercially. This is what the then energy minister, Richard Harrington, revealed to MPs in a scrutiny committee session (in a so-called ‘Delegated Legislation committee) on this week, full speech pasted below: “The draft regulations set out a regime to ensure that radioactive waste and spent fuel are not shipped into or out of the UK without prior authorisation from the relevant competent authorities.”
David Lowry’s Blog 10th April 2019 read more »
