Bertie Ahern, said he has continually raised issue of Sellafield with Tony Blair
The Taoiseach has said that parts of Sellafield, which have been temporarily shut pending safety reports, should never be re-opened. Mr Ahern told RTÉ News the Government would use an international environmental conference in Copenhagen later this year to press for their permanent closure. He was speaking in London where he had been holding talks with Tony Blair on the restoration of the North's power-sharing institutions.
Bertie Ahern said that he has continually raised the issue of Sellafield with Tony Blair but that Britain sees the reprocessing of nuclear fuel which takes place at the Cumbria plant as an important strategic industry. At the moment though, following a series of critical reports by British safety inspectors, the functions of some units at the Sellafield complex have been suspended. Mr. Ahern now says that those units should be closed permanently and that Ireland will be strongly arguing the case for this at the OSPAR international environmental conference in Copenhagen this summer.
The Taoiseach says he has pointed out to Tony Blair that it is British safety inspectors themselves who have raised the doubts about Sellafield. At the last OSPAR conference in Portugal the British agreed reductions in radioactive emissions into the Irish Sea. This year in Copenhagen Bertie Ahern wants Irish officials to push much further.
