By Matthew Legg Business editor

Last updated at 14:08, Monday, 16 February 2009

An anti-nuclear group has warned west Cumbrians: “Be afraid, very afraid” after bosses at the Drigg waste dump admitted they don’t know what’s buried there.

Incomplete record: Drigg low level N-waste dump

Management at the Low Level Waste Repository (LLWR), near Sellafield, have placed newspaper adverts appealing for ex-employees who worked at the site in 1960s, 70s and 80s to come forward.

The aim is to build up a picture of what was stored there and how it was buried. Drigg bosses say the vast majority of material is accounted for.

But Martin Forwood, spokesman for Cumbrians Opposed to a Radioactive Environment (Core), said the admission should send shockwaves through the local community. He added: “Be afraid, very afraid.

“If they can’t even account for the lower category of radioactive wastes, what hope is there for the volumes of significantly more dangerous intermediate and high level wastes they now so desperately want to dump deep underground somewhere in the UK?

“(The) advert implores workers who tipped nuclear waste into the site’s open trenches over a 25-year period from 1960 to try and remember exactly what it was they dumped.

“Given that the trenches have now been capped and sealed off for some years, those workers still alive will be hard pushed to recall exactly what they were chucking away up to fifty years ago.”

Core claims to have information that higher category waste is stored at Drigg including debris from the US Three Mile Island reactor accident and from Chernobyl.

London-based environment consultancy EBM Consultants has been employed to carry out the Drigg study.

EBM managing director Katherine Robinson said: “It’s what is in the trenches we are particularly interested in.”

First published at 14:07, Monday, 16 February 2009
Published by http://www.newsandstar.co.uk