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Iceland calls on Britain to shut nuclear plant

LONDON: Iceland on Friday called on Britain to close down British Nuclear Fuels' (BNFL) Sellafield nuclear reprocessing plant in the wake of a scandal over faked safety documents.

Icelandic Foreign Minister Halldor Asgrimsson, in London to meet his British counterpart Robin Cook over the issue, said the state-run plant's location on the northwest coast of England endangered his country's economic backbone -- fishing.

"We have on numerous occasions posed our concern over radioactive discharges from the Sellafield plant -- we are very worried about this operation and have been for many years," Asgrimsson said, renewing calls for the plant to be closed following last week's damning report on the facility.

"What we would like to see is that Sellafield will be closed down, but I don't think that is very realistic," he added.

Asgrimsson said Iceland expected Britain at the very least to stop any radioactive waste spilling into the sea, saying a number of other Nordic countries had voiced concerns over the plant.

"We are living from the resources of the ocean, that is our garden and it is very important for the livelihood of Iceland and many countries in the north that we keep that clean ocean," he told BBC radio.

Britain's nuclear watchdog last week published a report showing that BNFL's Mox (mixed oxide fuel) Demonstration Facility -- which is on the same site as the main Sellafield plant -- had falsified safety documents for reprocessed fuel exported to Japan.

The Japanese have demanded BNFL take back the plutonium consignments, and the government has said the row had been a setback to plans to partly privatise the company. Britain had been hoping to offload a 49 percent stake in BNFL.

And a German company said it would seek damages from BNFL after it was forced to temporarily shut down one of its nuclear plants after it found the documentation of a consignment of nuclear fuel bought from BNFL had been tampered with.

Beleaguered BNFL's woes do not stop there.

A U.S. campaign group is due to hand it a petition later on Friday in a bid to block the company's plans to build a nuclear waste incinerator near the famous Yellowstone National Park.-Reuters