Sellafield And The Mixed Oxide Plant

EDM number 218 in 2001-02, proposed by Eddie McGrady on 04/10/2001.

That this House recognises that there is no economic and environmental justification for the Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to authorise the operation of the Mixed Oxide Plant at the British Nuclear Fuels nuclear re-processing plant at Sellafield because the cost of MOX fuel is much higher than that of ordinary uranium-oxide nuclear reactor fuel; believes that technical considerations may make reactors fuelled by MOX less safe and that the need to protect MOX fuel elements kept at nuclear reactors will involve nuclear reactors in new physical security problems; asserts that the use of MOX increases the risk of serious accidents during transportation and that international safeguards designed to prevent nuclear proliferation are difficult to enforce at facilities associated with MOX; believes that the use of MOX will increase rather than reduce the stock of plutonium and that the use of MOX increases the risk of nuclear-weapon proliferation by countries and perhaps by terrorist organisations; and therefore calls on the Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs not to authorise the operation of the Mixed Oxide Plant at Sellafield.

This motion has been signed by a total of 31 MPs.