Communities across the country are to be offered lucrative benefits if they volunteer to host burial sites for nuclear waste.

Hilary Benn, the Environment Secretary, told Parliament that he would be writing to every local authority in the country to invite them to come forward to host the waste in vaults deep underground.

Places that agreed to take waste could expect to be rewarded not only with the jobs boost that would accompany the "multi-billion pound high tech projects", but also "other benefits", such as additional Government help with infrastructure and services.

Mr Benn said: "Any community that hosts a site would provide essential services to the nation and would expect government to ensure that the project contributes to its wellbeing. To this end there may be other benefits identified and developed through discussions between the community and the Government."

Critics have accused him of offering "bribes" to take hazardous material. But Mr Benn said: "It's not unreasonable that a community that comes forward should receive some support and consideration for doing that."

The details of any deal would be agreed through negotiations with the Government, he explained, emphasising that he wanted a solution that was "based on consent".

Mr Benn said that sites would need to undergo a geological assessment to ensure they were safe to contain nuclear material in a way that was "safe, secure and environmentally acceptable". The waste will remain radioactive for thousands of years.

"Geological disposal is the internationally preferred approach for managing such waste and is being adopted in many countries including Belgium, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, the United States and Sweden," Mr Benn said.

Any discussions entered into at this stage would be "exploratory" and non-binding, Mr Benn said. "Communities would have until the last minute to say 'thanks, but no thanks'. "

Environmental groups blasted the plans as "shambolic". Greenpeace's Nathan Argent said: "It's about bribing a community with £1bn of taxpayers’ money to bury waste in their back garden. But there’s no guarantee a willing community will come forward or that they’ll be able to find a geologically suitable site anywhere in this country."

Final decisions on the sites may not come for more than a decade and Mr Benn said final costs were not yet clear. The plan is intended to deal with waste from Britain's existing nuclear power stations, but his Conservative shadow, Peter Ainsworth, accused him of "muddling up" this with future waste from a new generation of nuclear power stations. Mr Benn said builders of new nuclear power stations would have to pay for disposal of their own waste.

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