Socialist Party Wales Socialism In Wales
The quango charged with protecting the environment in Wales, Natural Resource Wales(NRW), has defended the dumping of 300,000 tonnes of nuclear-contaminated mud from the Hinkley Point nuclear power station on the south wales seashore, near Penarth.
Despite widespread opposition, including a protest at the Senedd of hundreds of people, a licence has been granted by NRW to allow the mud to be dumped at Cardiff grounds, near Penarth. It insists the mud is safe and it would be open to legal action if it did not allow the company building the new nuclear power station at Hinkley Point to deposit the mud contaminated by the old nuclear power stations at the site.
NRW claims that it cannot refuse permission to dump unless there is evidence that the deposits would be unsafe. But conveniently it has not carried out the full range of tests on the mud that will be dumped on the Welsh seashore.
Campaigners point out that tests below 5cm have not been carried out since 2009 and the full range of spectrometric tests have not been carried out that are carried out in other parts of Europe. Why does NRW not carry out further tests if it so confident that the mud is safe?
This controversy is the latest in a series that Natural Resources Wales has been exposed as partners with big business rather than protecting the environment. It was formed as a merger of the Environment Agency Wales, Countryside Council for Wales, and the Forestry Commission Wales, and is supposed to “pursue sustainable management of natural resources”. But in practice it works hand in glove with business interests rather than pursuing sustainability.
NRW recently faced big protests against a large tree-cutting exercise it carried out in three Cardiff parks as part of an unnecessary flood-defence system. Local activists suspect that the flood-defences could have been carried out to allow developers to build new houses on park land. NRW was heavily criticised by an Assembly committee for deal it made to sell timber to private saw mill companies, forcing the resignation of the chair.
The dumping of nuclear mud will also intensify the national question in Wales. The issue resonates with the memory of the Tryweryn reservoir when the north Wales village of Capel Celyn was flooded to provide water for Liverpool in 1965. The destruction of Tryweryn gave a big boost to Welsh nationalism and Plaid Cymru – in 1966 Plaid Cymru won its first by election. The dumping of English radioactive mud in Wales has been seized on by Welsh nationalist groups in the same way.
