Cheap and dirty plants Nuclear waste poses a significant technical and political problem for the governments and companies operating plutonium separation plants. To drive down the amount of waste, Britain and France systematically pour massive quantities of radioactivity into the sea and air. The discharged radioactivity could be significantly reduced if filters and other retention technologies were applied. Industry argues however, that this is expensive and unnecessary. What they mean is that waste that is currently dumped would be retained, and would therefore have to be dealt with by the industry, thereby increasing their financial and political costs. The Plutonium industry has therefore decided that discharge is far more attractive than environmental protection. La Hague, Sellafield and Dounreay all pump nuclear waste directly into the sea and air. Their discharges contain a range of radioactive isotopes that will remain toxic for tens of thousands of years-in some cases, tens of millions. The discharges are daily, routine practice, the result of the official French and British government policy-implemented by the plutonium industries-of dumping the waste and dodging the consequences. The reprocessing industry has repeatedly stated that it is effectively reducing discharges, in fact the opposite is true. While public pressure forced a reduction in discharges in the 1980s, Britain and France opened three new reprocessing factories in the last seven years, and both governments have permitted extensive new radioactive discharges. Together, the reprocessing plants form the main source of human-generated radioactive contamination in the marine environment of Northern Europe, accounting for a staggering 97% of radioactive discharges. In just over 30 years the reprocessiing plants of the UK and France will discharge as much radioactivity as was released by Chernobyl.
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