Oh the irony

Augean only have to apply for planning permission for low level
radioactive waste because their existing planning permission restricts
them to handling Hazardous Waste.

In other words, LLW is so non-hazardous that it doesn't fall within
their exiting permission. How bizarre.

"The answer to your question is that it all depends upon what the
existing planning permission for waste disposal at any site allows. The
Planning Permission which exists at King’s Cliffe is for the disposal of
Hazardous waste only and this does not include Low Level Radioactive
Waste (LLW). The situation at Lillyhall, as I understand it, is that the permission
for waste disposal does not have any restrictions on the types of waste
which could be deposited at the site and has taken high volumes of Very
Low Level Radioactive Waste (VLLW) since 1995. As such and based on
legal advice Cumbria County Council accepted that the LLW disposal is
permitted.

Phil Watson

Development Control Manager
Planning Development Control
Northamptonshire County Council"

Some numbers....

Background radiation varies across the UK, from under 0.2 mSv/year to
over 0.4 mSv/year (milli Sieverts per year, a measure of exposure).

see http://www.darvill.clara.net/nucrad/sources.htm and countless other
sources.

The Environment Agency will not give a permit to a waste facility that
exposes the public to 0.3 mSv/yr or higher, and expects typical exposure
to be 0.02 mSv/year.

In other words typical exposure will be one tenth or less of the
background radiation, or about 1% of the total radiation exposure of a
typical UK resident.

Someone else who doesn't care

http://www.gpplanning.co.uk/portfolio.php

"PROJECT NAME:
Rockingham Forest Park
PROJECT LOCATION:
Kings Cliffe to Wansford, Peterborough
PROJECT TYPE:
Outline Planning Application and Environmental Impact Assessment for a
Forest Holiday Destination
CLIENT:
Rockingham Forest Park Ltd
DESCRIPTION:
GP Planning Ltd is leading an extensive and well renowned consultant
team in the preparation of proposals for a forest holiday destination.
Rockingham Forest Park will be a forest holiday destination for the
whole family with a range of leisure, retail and tourism facilities."

should be able to see the LLW being unloaded from their bijou log
cabins.

Somebody doesn't care....

There is a planning proposal to build 145 homes in King's Cliffe which
has been rumbling on for a while. Outline planning permission exists and
last July an application to resolve a number of "reserved matters" was
received by East Northamptonshire District Council.

The application was approved in February 2011. 10/01277/REM is the ENDC
reference.

So if house prices fall in King's Cliffe we'll know that oversupply is
the reason, not the nuclear genie up the hill.

The Environment Agency says....

"We will not authorise any disposals unless are satisfied that public
radiation exposures are below a ‘dose constraint’ of 0.3 millisieverts
(mSv2) per year. In most cases we would expect them to be no greater
than 0.02 mSv per year (average UK doses from all sources, including
natural background and medical exposures are about 2.6 mSv per year)."

http://www.environment-agency.gov.uk/business/sectors/100241.aspx

Where does LLW come from

According to NuLeAF 10/3/2010 :-


"By far the highest volume is forecast to arise in the North West, with
an estimated packaged LLW volume of 2,382,312 cubic metres. For other
regions in England, the forecasted packaged LLW volumes (cubic metres)
include:

South East 295,426
South West 167,994
East of England 100,813
North East 12,992"

and.....

"The study commissioned in the SE, which sought to identify regional
needs, illustrates the challenge of developing appropriate
recommendations against a backdrop of changing forecasts and proposals
from the market. For example, a recommended LLW disposal facility to
serve the SE and SW may not be needed in the short term if permissions
are granted for disposal of LLW to the hazardous landfill site at King’s
Cliffe in Northamptonshire."

More EU approvals for UK LLW Landfill

Clifton Marsh Low-level Radioactive Waste Disposal Facility in
Lancashire and Lillyhall Very Low-level Radioactive Waste Disposal
Facility in Cumbria have joined the East Northants Low-level Radioactive
Waste Disposal Facility, located in Northamptonshire in receiving EU
approval under Article 37 of the Euratom Treaty.

In essence this approval states that there is no risk to other EU member
states :-

"In conclusion, the Commission is of the opinion that the implementation
of the plan for the disposal of radioactive waste in whatever form
arising from the East Northants Low-level Radioactive Waste Disposal
Facility in the United Kingdom, during its normal operational life and
after its final closure, as well as in the event of an accident of the
type and magnitude considered in the General Data, is not liable to
result in the radioactive contamination of the water, soil or airspace
of another Member State."

http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:C:2011:077:0003:01:EN:HTML
http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:C:2011:077:0001:01:EN:HTML
http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:C:2011:006:0001:01:EN:HTML

Did you know ?

Did you know that Augean would put £5 into a community projects fund for
every tonne of LLW landfilled at their facility ? This was a Section
106 planning agreement with Augean suggested by the NCC Planning Officer
as part of his recommendation to grant planning permission for disposal
of low level radioactive waste into the toxic waste facility at King's
Cliffe.

£5/t could add up to over a million pounds, funding the sort of projects
that King's Cliffe has benefited from already under the Landfill Tax
scheme and direct grants from Augean.

I bet our campaigning friends forgot to mention that when painting their
"everything is black" picture.

Mistruths and omissions

It is interesting, if not alarming, to see the amount of misinformation
and omission of information used by campaigners against the landfill
disposal of low level radioactive waste in Augean's toxic waste disposal
facility near King's Cliffe.

Apparently you have to distort virtually everything (or keep it hushed
up) in order to appear to be the little people fighting against the big
bad corporate evil, or something.

Even our County Councillor, Heather Smith, falls into the trap. The
proponents of a Parish Poll in Nassington called a parish meeting at 7pm
in their Village Hall on a day where the hall was booked for a Parish
Council meeting at 7.15pm. The resulting rush was described by an
observer as "a shambles of a meeting" and yet the good Mrs Smith told
another public meeting yesterday that "Nassington Parish Council cut
short the meeting on the parish poll" (or words to that effect). Err, no
they didn't. Some idiot booked the meeting with only 15 minutes of time
free in the hall, perhaps in an attempt to overrun into the PC meeting
but nevertheless it was a failure of the arrangements of the first
meeting that "cut it short".

Something else I was told at our second parish meeting on the subject by
one of the 6 signatories calling the meeting - "Augean are a French
company". Err, no they aren't. Augean plc are a company registered in
England & Wales, Company No. 05199719, with Registered Office in
Yorkshire. They are a PLC traded on the Alternative Investment Market of
the London Stock Exchange. Their board, who you can see at
http://www.augeanplc.com/directors/default.aspx, look to have decidedly
English names. But there you go, let's not let a simple fact get in the
way of a good story.

A local campaigner against the LLW proposals has said that no "nuclear
waste" (his words) currently goes into landfill, no private company is
licensed to handle LLW, and Augean are the only company proposing to do
so. Err, wrong on several counts. The Environment Agency web site
describes two other applications to landfill LLW at
http://www.environment-agency.gov.uk/business/sectors/100241.aspx and
also explains how a site in Lancashire has been lanfilling LLW for some
years - "The application relates to their existing landfill site at
Clifton Marsh near Preston in Lancashire, PR4 0XE. The site already
holds a permit, under the Environmental Permitting Regulations, to
dispose of controlled waste. Separate authorisations under the
Radioactive Substances Act have allowed disposal of low level
radioactive waste at the site for over twenty years. Those
authorisations are held by sites who consign waste to Clifton Marsh, but
our regulatory policy is now that Sita should be authorised in their own
right, hence the current application."

So when we read of local opposition to putting slightly radioactive
waste into a landfill, instead of highly toxic substances, just remember
the climate of misinformation that fosters or produces this local
opposition.