NIREX is the latest name to conjure with in the growing nuclear vocabulary surrounding Sellafield. It is a public company owned by the UK nuclear industry and its main function is to find ways of disposing of the large quantities of radioactive waste which the industry inevitably generates.

What Nirex is planning, for the moment, is a "rock characterisation facility" RCF for short near the long established nuclear reprocessing plant at Sellafield on the Cumbrian coast. It is designed to serve as an underground laboratory to test geological conditions in the area.

The purpose of this elaborate exercise, at an estimated cost of £195 million, would be to establish if the area is suitable for storing up to 400,000 cubic metres of low to intermediate level radioactive waste in a vast rock cavern, over 700 metres below ground level, for thousands of years.

What worries Emmet Stagg and other objectors, such as Greenpeace, is that the RCF may be a Trojan horse for the much larger deep waste repository (DWR) project. Having spent so much money on it, they reason, Nirex and the British government are unlikely to plug the hole and walk away.

Nirex insists the only decision made so far is to carry out detailed investigations of the site. "It is not part of a deep waste repository development and does not commit Nirex to the development of a DWR at Sellafield", according to the company's counsel, Mr Lionel Read QC.

But Greenpeace says the RCF "will be built in the exact location of the final dump and will form its backbone". If it is allowed to go ahead, it will condemn Cumbria to being the world's nuclear dust bin without having allowed a public examination of the angers and damage it could cause.

One of the reasons cited by Cumbria County Council, in refusing planning permission to Nirex in December 1994, was, that the RCF "represents a significant pre commitment to eventual repository development in economic terms" and should not therefore be "looked at in isolation".

The council said it was "not satisfied, on the basis of currently available geological, hydrogeological and safety assessment information, that the potential repository zone holds sufficient promise to justify the proposed RCF development", particularly at the edge of the Lake District National Park.

TS decision also described the RCF as "a major development, more national than local in character", saying convincing reasons had not been given to show that "the sum of national, regional and local benefits clearly outweigh the adverse environmental impact of the proposed development".

Nirex appealed against the county council's decision, arguing that its rock laboratory was necessary to enable the company, "consistent with government policy, to continue its site investigation programme for a deep repository for the disposal of low level and intermediate radioactive waste".

However, the wider issues relating to this dump particularly its long term safety cannot be raised by objectors at the planning inquiry which has been under way at Cleator Moor, inland from Sellafield, since September. The inquiry is confined to dealing with "local planning matters" only.

The submission made on behalf of Mr Stagg, the Minister of State for Energy, notes with some regret that its scope could have been widened considerably if the British Environment Secretary, Mr John Gummer, had "called in" the Nirex application and ordered a full scale public inquiry.

The fact that he did not has led to accusations from Greenpeace of collusion between the government and Nirex "to ensure that the bases of key decisions are shrouded in secrecy" in particular, why the site selection process had focused so closely on the area around Sellafield.

HE objectors, including Mr Stagg and his Department, believe Sellafield was selected on economic rather than safety grounds and because the people of the area are "familiar" with the nuclear industry. It is estimated Sellafield employs 17 per cent of the local population, directly or indirectly.

Mr Stagg is "strongly of the view that the site selection process ought to be fully transparent and subject to independent review if the genuine fears of those who are concerned about Nirex's proposal to build an RCF at Sellafield, including the Irish Government and public, are to be allayed.

"Any process that does not involve full transparency and independent review will inevitably cause suspicion and result in increased fears," his submission says, adding "The Minister notes that he is not alone in this view."

Indeed, it is shared by all of the objectors at the Cleator Moor hearing.

Greenpeace cites international guidelines which recommend avoiding areas with complex geology and hydrogeology, seismic risks and ground water sources. The Sellafield site is in a geologically complex area, with difficult to predict water flows, is near a fault," zone and below an aquifer," it says.

According to the Royal Society, Nirex chose the Sellafield site before knowing enough about the rocks and patterns of underground water movement. Given that the, focus of future UK policy is "irretrievable deep disposal", under, which waste would be stored out" of reach, this is seen as a serious's flaw.

Under the strategy, as Mr Stagg's submission notes, canisters of radioactive waste would be inserted in the repository and subsequently cemented in. There, "they will be exposed to and affected by whatever geological effects arise through time, including ground water penetration, corrosion [and] crushing".

Although a rock cavern might be stable and secure over decades" and even centuries, "on the necessary time frame for containing this deadly waste, of 10,000 to 100,000 years, such an environment is in fact a mobile, vulnerable and transient one in a geological sense", according to the Minister.

Calling for the Nirex plan to be rejected, he says the risk of a major accident such as radioactive material leaking into groundwater "would be greatly reduced by geographical dispersal of nuclear facilities rather than by concentration of so many nuclear activities on the Sellafield site".

If Nirex does decide to proceed with plans for a deep waste repository at the RCF site in Gosforth, the British authorities have pledged that there will be a full scale public inquiry. By then, however, those who object including the Government fear it will be a fait accompli.