>"It is just as environmentally friendly." Yeah, sure.

Bad policies implemented in a single country doesn't determine environmental friendliess of a energy production technology as a whole. Obviously a nuclear power plant is not environmentally friendly if the waste is not taken care of.

No, but you can't promote an energy source on the basis of some idealized dream where every ounce of waste is properly taken care of, when the reality is different. If the UK has handled waste in this way, do you think other countries have handled, or will handle it any better?

Yes, I believe the country I live in will handle this better. This is our solution: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repos...

Yeah, for a few million years. What a great excuse ...

I'm not arguing that it is fine to drop stuff in the oceans, but that first one doesn't sound that dangerous:

"Die britischen Fässer enthalten nach Angaben der IAEA 58 Billionen Becquerel, die belgischen 2,4 Billionen Becquerel Alpha-, Beta und Gammastrahlung. Der EU-Grenzwert für Trinkwasser liegt bei 10 Becquerel pro Liter."

So, there's about 6 * 10^10 Becquerel radiation there, while the EU allows 10 per liter. If so, mixing this with 6 * 10^9 liters of water would dilute it enough to be within EU limits. That's 6 * 10^6 cubic meter. If the stuff got dropped over an area of a square kilometer in a depth of 6 meter, you would already get there.

So, I expect at worst, localized contamination of sea water.

Also, http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs291/en/: "The WHO guidelines for drinking water quality recommend repeated measurements to be implemented if radon in public drinking water supplies exceeds 100 Bq/l.". That puts that 10 Bq/l EU norm into perspective.

> "It is just as environmentally friendly." Yeah, sure.

Attributing the acts of a government to an entire technology doesn't seem appropriate.