TENDERS are to be invited from town halls to site nuclear waste bunkers in their areas in return for multimillion-pound investment in local services.

David Miliband, the Environment Secretary, confirmed yesterday the long-expected decision to bury the waste from Britain’s ageing civil nuclear power stations up to 1,000 metres (3,280ft) from the surface. The plan, which will cost £10 billion over several decades, will not involve nuclear waste being imposed on any community, Mr Miliband told the Commons.

Local authorities will be asked to volunteer to have dumps in their area, and the inducements will be attractive.

The construction project could take 40 years to complete. It has not yet been decided whether there will be one bunker or several. That will be determined by how many councils show an interest and whether their locations are suitable.

Mr Miliband said that the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, accountable to independent regulators and the government, would be responsible for the process. Peter Ainsworth, the Shadow Environment Secretary. said that there was a potential conflict of interest in giving responsibility to an authority that owns nuclear facilities.

In July the Committee on Radioactive Waste Management recommended burying radioactive waste deep underground as the best option. It recognised that public resistance would be an obstacle — as it had been to proposals for deep disposal in the 1980s, which were abandoned.

Mr Miliband accepted the recommendation that the waste should be dealt with through “geological disposal”. The Government would adopt a “voluntarist and partnership approach” and would not seek to impose the storage facility on any unwilling community, he said. Lucrative “community packages” would be available for local authorities prepared to offer a suitable location.

If there is one bunker it will have an estimated capacity of 470,000 cubic metres. The site or sites will have to be in an area where the rock structure provides a barrier against radioactive leakage.

Mr Miliband also announced that the Government intends to build interim storage facilities capable of holding waste for up to 100 years while the bunker is being built. He would be inviting local authorities around the country to come forward with possible sites.

“The circumstances surrounding the long terms disposal of higher activity radioactive waste are unique,” he told the House. “We have made it clear that we are not seeking to impose radioactive waste on any community. In this context, we are strongly supportive of exploring the concept of voluntarism and partnership arrangements with local authorities serving communities who might be affected.”

Paul Bettison, of the Local Government Association, said that people would have to be properly consulted about any proposal affecting their area: “There are only a limited number of suitable sites and we must ensure that no national body railroads over the interests of local people.”

Duncan McLaren, of Friends of the Earth, said: “Dumping nuclear waste in the ground is no solution to the problem of this country’s deadly radioactive waste legacy. Solving the problem should not begin with bribes but with a pledge not to create any more waste.” Nathan Argent, of Greenpeace, said: “There’s already enough nuclear waste in this country to fill the Albert Hall five times over.

“It could take several generations to find a so-called suitable disposal site, if indeed at all. Therefore a period of interim storage will be inevitable, meaning nuclear waste will continue to be trundled around the country for decades.”

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