GREEN campaigners lashed out at plans to bring more radioactive waste to store at Harwell.

The Ministry of Defence wants to dispose of waste from the decommissioning of a nuclear reactor at the Royal Naval College, Greenwich, in time for the Millennium celebrations.

There would be about five lorry loads of radioactive material from the decommissioning of the Jason low-powered reactor which has been in operation at Greenwich - close to the Millennium Dome since 1962 for training the Royal Navy's nuclear submarine fleet.

Decommissioning work is planned to start this summer. The Environment Agency, which has to approve arrangements for the disposal of radioactive wastes, said most of the material would be solid low-level radioactive waste.

The spokesman said solid low-level radioactive waste would be disposed of at the national waste repository operated by British Nuclear Fuels at Drigg in Cumbria. But a spokesman said: "Small quantities of solid intermediate waste would be stored at the solid waste centre run by the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority at Harwell." Anti-nuclear lobbyist Wendy MacLeod-Gilford, of Blewbury Environmental Research Group, argued that the use of Harwell as a "nuclear waste dump" posed a threat to people, and especially children, who live nearby.

She said: "There are nursery schools and a primary school on the Harwell site as well as plans for 300 homes on a private housing.

"Here we have a major nuclear site which should not have young children or housing on it."

Mrs MacLeod-Gilford said the waste from the Greenwich reactor was the latest in a series of contracts to reprocess store radioactive waste at Harwell.

"It is big business," she said.

But Harwell spokesman Nick Hance rejected the criticism.

"Harwell has been a nuclear site for 50 years during which time people have been living in the residential area of the site."

He said: "The facilities for the storage of radioactive waste include a new £50m state-of-the-art area for the safe storage of nuclear waste.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.