Plans to dump radioactive waste at Northamptonshire landfill site rejected
Controversial plans to dump radioactive waste in a landfill site in Northamptonshire were today refused.
Waste management company Augean Plc, which operates the East Northants Resource Management Facility (ENRMF) landfill, applied to store the low level radioactive waste (LLW) waste at the site in Kings Cliffe, Northamptonshire.
The site is already used to store hazardous waste but if the plans were approved, would have become the first commercial landfill in the country to dispose of waste with this level of radioactivity.
It could have seen as much as 250,000 tonnes of low-level radioactive waste dumped there each year until 2013, when its current planning permission expires.
The firm needs permission from both Northamptonshire County Council and the Environment Agency to go ahead with the plans.
But today the county council's nine-strong Development Control Committee unanimously voted against the application, despite it being recommended for approval by the chief planning officer.
Committee chairman Ben Smith said the arrangement of bringing waste from nuclear sites across the country to store them at Kings Cliffe was not "best available technique".
He said: "The treatment should be on the site where the problem arises and quite frankly this must send a message surely out to anybody contemplating nuclear energy.
"I am a great supporter of nuclear energy but you can't leave a legacy for future generations to deal with and that is basically what we are left with today."
He said Kings Cliffe was not a purpose-built site, but an "opportune" one.
"It is not a purpose built site but a site that happens to be here for hazardous waste.
"To call that best available technique is just crazy to me."
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