Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-05-16-Speech-2-305"
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"en.20000516.12.2-305"2
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"Mr President, what the investigations into this incident show is what can best be described as a culture of management incompetence and one of complacency. The report by the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate in February of this year into the safety records found that these records had been systematically falsified. The processing of spent fuel from 34 plants in 9 different countries was thrown into doubt and, indeed, Japan, Germany and Switzerland stopped sending material – and quite rightly so – to Sellafield.
This whole sorry tale has added to the UK's reputation, as sordid as it is often inaccurate, as the "dirty man of Europe". I believe that all at Sellafield must accept collective responsibility for the things that have gone wrong and must act to improve them.
A number of improvements have been made: the new chairman of BNFL has undertaken a fundamental review; a number of people have been dismissed. There is undoubtedly progress. However, there is a lot yet to be achieved and there is a long way for the UK to go, and for BNFL to go to re-establish its reputation.
I would ally myself with the concerns of Mrs McNally, when she asked the Commissioner to look again at these matters. The fact is that the Commissioner telling us that the rules of individual Member States are more specific is simply not good enough. We need high minimum standards and, in particular, we need those standards in the light of the accession of candidate countries, many of which are more reliant on nuclear technology than existing members of the Union and have much older generating capacity.
The importance of European Union action in this matter is that it will be a confidence-building measure, and what the public want are confidence-building measures. I recognise and feel deeply the concern expressed by colleagues in the Republic of Ireland and Denmark. The fact is that we need legislation to implement what is called for in the motion put forward by the three main political groups tonight: high minimum standards for the safe and reliable design, construction and operation of nuclear and nuclear-related installations, as well as for nuclear-safety management systems.
My group cannot support the Green motion here tonight. We feel that it treats the matter in too gargantuan terms. It raises the perfectly legitimate question of whether nuclear reprocessing should continue at Sellafield. But one cannot conduct this debate in the terms employed by the tabloid newspapers. We support the motion put forward by the three major political groups because we believe that improvements need to be made, improvements are being made, but that those improvements will be encouraged by an EU-wide approach to this whole matter. We recognise too the great significance of this plant for employment in west Cumbria and we believe that should the future of the plant be thrown into jeopardy then the European Commission must come forward with special measures to help regenerate other employment in the area.
This is a saga in which nobody, least of all Sellafield, comes out well. But it is an area where action at European-Union level really can make a difference."@en1
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