Ireland was accused in The Hague yesterday of making claims about the controversial MOX (mixed oxide) plant at Sellafield which could cause "unnecessary public alarm".
Opening Britain's defence against Ireland's case for the release of two reports on the environmental and economic aspects of the £470 million plant, Mr Richard Plender QC said that he had to correct statements made on Monday by the Attorney General, Mr Rory Brady SC.
Claiming that radioactive discharges from the plant were "truly microscopic", he cited a UK Environment Agency estimate that they would be less than one-millionth of the annual dose that the average person in Britain or Ireland receives from natural background radiation.
This view had been supported by the opinion of a European Commission expert panel, which concluded that the MOX plant "is not liable to result in radioactive contamination, significant from the point of view of health, of the water, soil or airspace of another member-state".
Mr Plender pointed out that the Radiological Protection Institute of Ireland had consistently found that discharges from Sellafield posed no significant health risk to people in Ireland and said that legal actions taken in mid-2001 to prevent the MOX plant going into production had failed. These actions, in the High Court in London, had been brought by Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth.
Ireland had also been denied an interim injunction to halt production at the plant in an international case brought in Hamburg under the UN Law of the Sea Convention. Mr Plender emphasised that there was no safety issue in the material excised from the two reports to which Ireland is seeking access. Portions of the reports had been withheld because their release could cause commercial damage to British Nucleal Fuels plc, he said.
He said that the falsification of data relating to the MOX plant, discovered in 1999, related only to quality-control rather than safety. He said that Ireland had also accepted that the plutonium contained in MOX fuel made it less amenable for use by terrorists.
The hearing in the Peace Palace in The Hague, convened by the International Bureau of the Permanent Court of Arbitration, is expected to conclude on Friday. Most of the remaining days are likely to be taken up by lengthy legal argument from both sides.
