The British Deputy Prime Minister, Mr John Prescott, was fighting a rearguard action last night to prevent the forced closure of the Sellafield nuclear reprocessing facility. His government was dramatically isolated on discharges of radioactive wastes into the sea at the opening of an OSPAR convention meeting.
Pressure increased against Britain after it emerged that France, Europe's only other significant nuclear reprocessing state, had made a political decision to accept near to zero discharges where technically feasible.
The French delegation later proposed a wording for agreement encompassing this intention, which Ireland and Nordic countries accepted could be the basis of an agreement on radioactive wastes later today.
The Minister of State for Public Enterprise, Mr Joe Jacob, who has responsibility for Irish nuclear affairs, said he had reservations about some of the language in the French proposal, particularly the phrase "subject to technical feasibility ".
He told The Irish Times that Ireland was still pushing for a cessation of discharges by 2020. The French position could be worked on "but the text is too loose and open to too diverse interpretations. We want no back doors, no loopholes."
Mr Jacob said he was confident an agreement would emerge given the extent of participation by the two nuclear powers at the meeting, Britain and France. The tone of discussions was positive, including that at a meeting he had with th British Environment Secretary, Mr Michael Meacher.
Ministers from 15 countries at the OSPAR convention meeting in Sintra, Portugal, are trying to reach agreement on a legally-binding strategy to cut all forms of pollution into the north-east Atlantic.
In defiant mood, Mr Prescott said he was proud that Britain "had transformed its image as the dirty man of Europe, a fundamental change from the last government" but conceded negotiations on radioactivity were difficult.
He refused to accept the talks were about closing individual plants and might mean the end of reprocessing at Sellafield. "This is not about shutting Sellafield, it is about cutting discharges to as low as technically possible. I am not talking to you about dates for closure, 2020 or any others that have been mentioned; we are still in the middle of negotiations."
The Danish Environment Minister, Mr Svend Auken, said Britain was standing alone against 14 nations by refusing to accept near zero discharges of radioactivity. He sought progressive reductions in discharges now, and complete closure of Sellafield by 2020.
Mr Auken said his country and the other Nordic nations were particularly badly affected by Sellafield because its discharges migrated north, as far as the Arctic. "The UK has accepted the argument on chemicals but is asking us to treat radioactivity differently than chemicals yet we know that it does people harm."
A Greenpeace spokeswoman said last night it was clear that Britain was shaping up to adopt a final position somewhere between "as near as possible to zero discharges" - which Ireland was advocating - and "discharges at near background levels" of radioactivity. The latter option was, in effect, "business as usual".
(Additional reporting by PA, Guardian Service)
BNFL has won a huge nuclear clean-up contract from the US government worth nearly $7 billion. "It is the largest single nuclear clean-up project in the US, and probably the world," a BNFL spokesman said yesterday. The deal to clean up nuclear waste from the Department of Energy's Hanford, Washington, storage site needs to be approved by Congress. It will take 20 years to complete the work. BNFL said technological developments at its Sellafield facility had been critical in securing the contract.