By Andrew Bushe
DUBLIN — Taoiseach Bertie Ahern has stepped up his campaign to have the Sellafield nuclear reprocessing complex closed down by taking the argument directly to the British people.
In an unprecedented move, Fianna Fail last week placed a hard-hitting full-page ad in the London Times with the blunt headline “Shut Sellafield”.
“Sellafield poses an unacceptable and unnecessary risk to our environment,” it states.
Ahern and his ministers were angered by a decision of Prime Minister Tony Blair’s government to extend Sellafield’s operations and open a new MOX (mixed plutonium and uranium oxide) plant.
There was no prior consultation with Dublin about the move despite decades of tension about Sellafield, which is across the Irish Sea on the Cumbrian coast.
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The advertisement is signed by all members of the Fianna Fail parliamentary party.
“My party is the largest in Ireland, and we want to bring home to people in Britain how strongly we in Ireland feel about the danger posed to the entire population of these islands by the current operations at Sellafield and in particular by the proposed new MOX operation,” Ahern said in a statement.
The advertisement comes as both governments’ await the ruling of 21 international judges who last week heard Attorney General Michael McDowell and a team of lawyers in Hamburg ask the Law of the Sea Commission tribunal to force Britain to reverse the MOX decision.
Ireland wants the plant development frozen until it can argue its case at the UN that it represents an unacceptable threat to the marine environment and increases the safety risk in the event of a terrorist attack.
Britain is accused of breaches of the 1982 Law of the Sea Convention and McDowell also seeks a freeze on ships transporting nuclear material up and down the Irish Sea.
The ruling of the UN judges is expected early next month in advance of Dec. 20, when the MOX plant is due to be commissioned.
“In every way we can, we are pressing this case,” Ahern said.