The prospect of a "second Sellafield" is of particular interest to Mr Walter Regan, even if he is living many miles from the Irish Sea.
Mr Regan (71), a Co Galway man living with his wife, Nancy, in Renmore, is a former seaman who worked with the Limerick Steamship Company. He now believes that he and colleagues unwittingly dumped toxic and possibly radioactive waste in the Irish Sea which emanated from Windscale, as Sellafield was originally known, in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
The Irish shipping company was a regular agent for a customer in Cumbria, and the consignment of single 40cwt barrels was destined for dumping off Rockall.
Mr Regan and his colleagues never saw the rock, though a course was set for it many times. "Invariably, the weather was too bad. No one checked. So we'd tip the barrel into the Irish Sea, usually about 60 miles south of Holyhead."
The crew was not told of the precise nature of the waste, but he now believes it was either radioactive or toxic.
One barrel was disposed of every 10 days from the mid-1950s until Mr Regan left the company in 1964. Windscale opened officially in 1952.
The crewmen's suspicions were only aroused when they were paid extra for the job, Mr Regan said, speaking recently to The Irish Times in his home. "They started to give us £1 a man for it, which was good money in those days. The material was embedded in concrete, so it was loaded on a cradle on the top deck to make it easier for us to swing it over, and it always took four men to do it.
"But there is no way that 1/4 in casing on the drums could have survived corrosion and movement on the seabed, in what is a relatively shallow area."
Mr Regan believes four of the Irish company's fleet of 10 vessels were involved, the Kylemore, the Clarina, the Lanaghrone and the Derrynane. These vessels regularly carried cargo between Liverpool and Ireland, with salt, washing sodas and brass and copper piping among the frequent consignments through one of its most regular customers, ICI.
The Limerick Steamship Company, which ceased operations some 20 years ago, was one of the largest merchant traders under the Irish flag at the time, according to maritime historian Dr John de Courcy Ireland. It ran regular services to mainland Europe, including the Iberian Peninsula, and lost two vessels during the second World War. Its fleet was very modern and the company was well run.
"If we had deliveries in Sligo, Galway and Ballina, we would try to reach Rockall on a north-about trip," Mr Regan said. "But in the winter time it just wasn't on. There was so little knowledge then of the risks to the environment, and so little understanding of the harm that we might be doing. No questions were ever asked."
Few of Mr Regan's colleagues are still alive and he believes it is vital that an investigation take place into the activity. The Green Party foreign affairs spokesman, Mr John Gormley, is so concerned that he has raised the issue several times in the Dail with the Minister for the Marine and Natural Resources, Dr Woods, but says he has not been given satisfactory answers.
"The Minister said I hadn't given him enough information. But I think he is reluctant to pursue this with the British," Mr Gormley says. "There were no regulations on this material then, and what regulations that did exist were ignored. We could be facing a very serious problem in relation to the effect on the Irish Sea environment."
A spokesman for Dr Woods said the matter had been raised with the British authorities and had also been referred to the ministerial task force on radioactive dumping, established late last year. However, the information supplied had been "very vague" and no names had been given of the seamen involved.
"We would be interested to hear more information so that we can pursue this with the relevant authorities," the spokesman said.
Mr Regan's statements come at a time when Sellafield is still regarded as the main threat to the Irish Sea environment, through emissions rather than dumping. The overall levels of radioactivity in the Irish marine environment are continuing to fall, but the individual contribution of one radioactive substance is rising, according to the latest study issued by the Radiological Protection Institute of Ireland.
Last July the Oslo-Paris Convention (Ospar) member-states secured an agreement from Britain to reduce radioactive emissions into the sea to near zero by 2020. However, "near zero" was not defined in the agreement.