§ Lord Nugent of Guildfordasked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether they have yet received the Fifth Report of the Radioactive Waste Management Advisory Committee.
§ The Minister of State, Department of the Environment (Lord Bellwin)The Fifth Annual Report of the Radioactive Waste Management Advisory398WA Committee, under the chairmanship of Professor P. T. Matthews, CBE, FRS, has been published today and copies have been placed in the Library of the House. My right honourable friends, the Secretaries of State for the Environment, Scotland and Wales, are grateful to the committee for their work over the last year in advancing thinking on this important subject and in helping develop policy for radioactive waste management.
We have found the committee's advice on the need for further reductions in discharges of radioactive wastes from Sellafield very helpful and we shall bear it in mind in deciding on the way forward. We also accept their advice that the control of discharges must take into account all the relevant factors, and that these include radiation exposure and consequent risk to the general public and the workforce; the levels of discharge achieved elsewhere: the cost and reliability of appropriate technology; public acceptability; the relative detriment associated with alternative procedures; site-specific factors and the longer-term implications of long-lived radionuclides absorbed onto the seabed. The last aspect is one on which the committee have said they will he commenting further in due course.