The government has long faced criticism for stalling on the issue of the UK's nuclear waste stockpile. Nuclear energy is not a popular subject among voters at the best of times, so proposing to store highly radioactive material 300m or so below ground near their homes will be a hard sell. If the UK had vast tracts of unpopulated land with the right geology for a deep storage facility people might be willing to take a back seat and allow engineers and scientists to make the decisions. But as one of the most population-dense countries in Europe, this is not likely to happen. So how can government and industry get the right balance between consulting the public and making the right choice technically on something that will need to be stored safely underground for the next 100,000 years? The issue is under the spotlight again following the resignation of Prof David Ball from the Committee on Radioactive Waste Management (CoRWM), the body set up to advise the government on the best option for disposing of the UK's radioactive waste. Ball, professor of risk management at Middlesex University, was particularly scathing of the committee's decision to spend so long considering a number of 'flaky' options for disposing of the waste, such as firing it at the sun, before narrowing these down to the 'bleeding obvious', including deep 'disposal.
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