Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth are considering legal action to overturn a decision by the British government to approve operations at a mixed oxide fuel plant at Sellafield, in Cumbria.
The Environment Secretary, Mrs Margaret Beckett, and the Health Secretary, Mr Alan Milburn, announced yesterday that British Nuclear Fuels Ltd (BNFL) could go ahead with the manufacture of mixed oxide fuel (MOX), which is burnt by nuclear reactors, at the £473 million sterling plant.
The decision was immediately condemned as "outrageous" by environmental campaigners Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth who said shipping the fuel (a mixture of uranium and plutonium) around the world increased the risk of a terrorist attack. Both groups indicated they would consider an application for legal review of the decision, possibly within the next few days.
Mrs Beckett said the public consultation process over the past four years was "exhaustive". In addition to evaluating the economic case for MOX fuel, she said the government had considered the wider risks and benefits involved and had concluded that manufacturing the fuel was "justified" and met European environmental and safety standards.
Unions welcomed the decision, saying it would secure the jobs of 300 employees at the plant, and BNFL's chief executive, Mr Norman Askew, said he was "highly delighted".
It would enable the Mox plant to begin manufacturing the fuel and "repay the commitment" shown by BNFL's customers, he said.
Production is expected to commence in about ten weeks' time, following consent from the Health and Safety Executive.
The company is awaiting a decision by Japan as to whether it will go ahead with its order for MOX fuel.
A BNFL spokesman told The Irish Times that the potential of a terrorist attack was taken into consideration as part of its safety contingency plans.
"No stone is left unturned," the spokesman said, adding that all fuel shipments had to comply with safety regulations set down by the maritime authorities and the nuclear industry watchdog, the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate.
However, opponents of the MOX plant, which was completed in 1996 but mothballed while five public consultations took place, insisted that fuel shipments could become the target of terrorist attack, particularly in the wake of the atrocities in the US.
The executive director of Greenpeace in Britain, Mr Stephen Tindale, said expanding the global trade in plutonium was "dangerously irresponsible", particularly when Mr Blair had spoken after the US attacks about the potential for terrorists to strike using chemical or nuclear weapons.
"Other countries like Germany, Japan and the US are now halting nuclear transports and stepping up security at nuclear sites," he said.
"Yet the government here seems as ever hell-bent on supporting BNFL at any cost, even if that means plutonium shipments bobbing about like sitting ducks on the high seas.
"The on-board weaponry of these ships is no match for a determined terrorist."