UK’s threat to send nuclear waste back to Continent

BRITAIN has threatened to send tons of plutonium and highly-dangerous nuclear waste back to the EU if the Brexit talks fail to deliver a deal on nuclear regulation.

The threat comes amid uncertainty over the UK’s membership of Euratom, a body closely-linked to the EU which oversees nuclear waste and material.

EU negotiators have set out how responsibility for the materials, which are currently controlled by Euratom and cost huge amounts to store, should be transferred to the UK after Brexit.

But in a ‘position paper’ setting out its post-nuclear approach, UK officials said huge amounts could be sent back to EU countries where the material originated.

The paper says the UK should retain the right to ‘return radioactive waste recovered from the treatment or reprocessing operation’ following a Brexit agreement.

‘It might just be a reminder that a boatload of plutonium could end up at a harbour in Antwerp unless an arrangement is made,’ one Government nuclear advisor told the Financial Times. About 25 tons of plutonium belonging to EU countries such as Italy, Germany and Sweden is stored under high security at the Sellafield nuclear reprocessing plant in Cumbria.

The reserve of plutonium, which can be used for nuclear weapons, is the world’s largest civilian store.

A prominent German MEP has warned that leading EU officials are ganging up to ‘punish’ the UK’s nuclear position following Brexit.

Hans-Olaf Henkel told British ministers not to listen to the European Parliament’s Brexit coordinator Guy Verhofstadt and the bloc’s negotiator Michel Barnier.

‘I am afraid [they] want to make a mess out of this whole unhappy situation,’ he said. ‘It is obvious that it would be a disaster for the UK to leave Euratom but I don’t know who it would be worse for: us in the EU or you.’

While both the UK and Brussels have officially said Britain should leave Euratom, officials on both sides have acknowledged that the UK could be given ‘associate membership’.