The United Kingdom's atomic age began in 1956 when Calder Hall, the world's first industrial-scale power station, was opened at Sellafield in Cumbria.
It would produce, British consumers were told, electric power which would be "too cheap to meter"; the falsity of that became apparent very quickly. Assurances were also given at the time about the complete safety of nuclear power generation. Within a year, there was a fire and release of radioactive material at nearby Windscale.
Thankfully, the curtain came down on Calder Hall last March, because it had become increasingly uneconomic - although it will take 100 years of decommissioning before the site is safe. But the new Sellafield activities bring even more concern to the people of Cumbria and to Ireland. Two years ago, British Nuclear Fuels got the go-ahead to open a MOX fuel reprocessing plant. In essence, it combines oxides of uranium and plutonium from reprocessed fuel into mixed oxide (MOX) fuel for use in reactors. Permission was granted despite a scandal over falsified safety data, a complete loss of consumer confidence and the collapse of its commercial logic due to the arrival of cheaper alternative fuels. And it was granted in spite of the knowledge that the Irish Sea was already among the world's most radioactively-polluted.
The commissioning of the MOX plant, in a perverse way, manifested a positive development. The Government, after years of inaction bordering on indifference, finally woke up to the scale of the threat posed by Sellafield. The Attorney-General, Mr Rory Brady, initiated proceedings before an international tribunal.
On Tuesday, the UN Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague issued a pro-tem order that both governments must exchange information on nuclear safety. The Minister for the Environment, Mr Cullen, described the announcement as "an important new development" because it is the first time that the Government has won the right to be consulted on any new reprocessing. The order is merely a follow-up on a previous recommendation but it is the first concession to Ireland.
The Government's task, now that it has adopted an aggressive approach to Sellafield for the first time, must be to convince the tribunal that the radioactive discharges into the Irish Sea from the MOX plant are causing serious harm. High-level waste is stored; low-level waste should be stored also rather than dumped in the sea. The case, at all costs, must remain with the tribunal and not, as the British wish, fall under EU jurisdiction. Nuclear-happy EU nations such as France would quickly ensure that Ireland's case was dismissed.