Fairlie community councillor John Riddell believes EDF’s controversial proposals to transfer radioactive waste by road could have long term benefits for Hunterston.

EDF has requested a licence from the Scottish Government seeking the permission to transfer wastes from other EDF power station sites to Torness and Hunterston for interim storage; loading of containers and onward transfer.

Mr Riddell, who is a former district councillor, said: “The basis of the licence is to allow ILW from Torness to be taken to Hunterston or vice versa, put into bigger package and moved away from both stations to Drigg - seven or eight sites are listed for this disposal. It seems to me to take ILW out of Scotland seems quite a good idea. If you can take it away for safe disposal or safe treatment somewhere then why not?

“I have already had a long and helpful discussion with transport officers at the ONR (Office of Nuclear Regulation) and what they do is say- and they licence the transport contractor, who may be EDF or some private company - and that includes obviously the drivers, staff, vehiles and everybody else. They also authorise the container in which the waste is transported.

“The container and the person moving the container has to be licenced by the ONR and that seems to me to be quite a strong safeguard because after all, they are the same people that licence the movement of high level waste. It seems to me that if the result of this change in the licensing is to allow ILW to be moved away from Hunterston, and out of Scotland, in a properly licenced vehicle and containers, then that is a good thing for us.” At a recent Fairlie Community Council meeting, Mr Riddell also pointed out that there had been three statutory consultations which had already taken place into the proposals, including the ONR (Office for Nuclear Regulation), Scottish Government and the Food Standards Agency, and there had been no objections.

However, former chairman David Telford pointed out that it has always been the policy of the council that Hunterston would concern itself with storage of its own waste, but not with the transport of nuclear waste to or from others. Mr Telford said he believed it was important that the council maintained this princple.

And secretary Rita Holmes disagreed with Mr Riddell’s views, and said that neither the ONR or Scottish Government had given carte blanche for the movement of ILW, and said that specific agreements had yet to be made concerning safety and security of the transport movements.

She added: “The ONR are not saying that it is ok, and they say that they need to be satisfied with the security and safety of the movements - its dangerous stuff.” And community councillor Steve Graham said: “Basically our view has always been that waste that arises from Hunterston should stay in Hunterston. Instead of consolidating it at Hunterston, why are they not just taking it directly from Torness to Drigg? Why would you come across from East to West, and then go south - I wasn’t quite sure of the logistics of that.

“If you are going from Torness to Hunterston, you go up A1, up to Edinburgh and Glasgow and down to Hunterston, why would you do that? I just don’t see the logic of it.

“The general view is that in terms of ILW - is that what arises in Hunterston is getting stored, and why shouldn’t the same occur at Torness, and that, as far as I am aware, is the Scottish Government’s view - you minimise the number of journeys with waste, and you certainly minimise any waste which is ILW which is dangerous. It is an entirely different issue to low level waste.” The EDF website states: “Long-term, near-surface, near-site storage and disposal is the Scottish Government’s policy for ILW and long-lived low-level waste (LLW) in Scotland.

“EDF Energy’s approach to managing waste arising from the decommissioning of power station sites in Scotland is in keeping with this policy. ILW will continue to be stored in robust facilities on decommissioning sites until the near-surface facility disposal route is available.” The Scottish Environment Protection Agency has launched a public consultation on these applications (http://www.sepa.org.uk/about_us/consultations) Responses to the consultation should be sent in writing to the address below no later than 3 October to: The Registrar, Scottish Environment Protection Agency, Angus Smith Building, Parklands Avenue, Eurocentral, Holytown, North Lanarkshire ML1 4WQ.