Press release

Date: 14.12.01

Contact: Ms Eva Nordvik, Head of Information, +47 22 24 57 18, +47 90 99 66 72

Norwegian Environment Minister to Visit Sellafield

Mr Børge Brende, Norwegian minister of the environment, will next week visit the nuclear recovery plant at Sellafield and have talks with his Irish and British colleagues. In London the minister will be accompanied by the state secretary at the prime minister’s office, Mr Gunnar Kvassheim.

The minister leaves for Dublin on Sunday night 16 ^th> December. On Monday 17 ^th> December, he will meet the Irish minister Joe Jacobs. In the afternoon he leaves for London for discussions with Secretary of State Margaret Beckett and Minister of State (Environment) Michael Meacher at DEFRA. On Tuesday 18 ^th> December he will visit the Sellafield plant.

"As nextdoor neighbour to Sellafield, Ireland is even more affected by these discharges than Norway is. When I meet the Irish minister, Joe Jacobs, I will therefore listen carefully to the Irish views. As we in Norway are considering the legal aspects of the Sellafield issue, I will pay particular attention to the viewpoints and lessons learnt by the Irish in their legal battles with Britain over breaches to the Law of the Sea and OSPAR Conventions," Mr Brende says.

On the agenda of the Norwegian environment minister’s meetings with his British colleagues are a number of important international environmental issues, including follow-up of the Climate Change Convention and preparations for the Johannesburg summit meeting and the North Sea Conference in Bergen in March 2002. The minister will also take the opportunity to stress the importance of the Sellafield issue to Norway and once again request that the British government reduce these discharges now.

"Technetium 99 remains a contaminant for a very long time. Therefore, I am very concerned about Britain’s plans to allow these discharge levels to continue unchanged up until 2006. Consumers are increasingly demanding uncontaminated food, and radioactive pollution of the seas is the last thing a fishing nation like Norway would want. These are matters I want to discuss personally with the Irish and British authorities. The background for this is that British authorities are ignoring demands by Ireland, Norway and the other Nordic countries for a reduction of Technetium 99 discharges. My visit to Sellafield is first and foremost an opportunity to remind British Nuclear Fuels, the owners of the plant, that relying on discharging into the sea and dilution there is an unaccaptable solution to Sellafield’s waste problems," Mr Brende concludes.