A CAMPAIGN group attempting to block the dumping of waste from a nuclear power plant into waters off the Welsh coast has rejected claims their concerns are “alarmist.”

Members of ‘Stop the Dump’ have been fighting against Welsh Government proposals to relocate waste from the Hinkley Point nuclear power station - which is just 14 miles across the water from Barry Island - into the Bristol Channel at a site referred to as ‘the Cardiff Grounds’.

Late last year the Vale of Glamorgan council met to discuss the plans, with leader Cllr John Thomas saying “local residents are understandably very concerned about this proposal” and that the council would “take all steps possible to ensure all necessary assessments are undertaken and safeguards are in place when and if any depositing of material goes ahead.”

Stop the Dump have denied accusations of scaremongering from EDF, who run Hinkley power station, arguing that the Welsh Government and its partners are being “reckless” in their consideration of the proposals.

EDF’s head of environment, Chris Fayers, said in December that concerns raised by Stop the Dump that the waste may be radioactive were: “wrong, alarmist and go against all internationally-accepted scientific evidence.”

Mr Fayers told a Welsh Assembly committee last month that the mud was “not radioactive,” and that it had been tested “independently to highly conservative standards.”

Tests run on the sediment indicated that while a level of radioactivity was present in the mud, the amount was so low that it would not be legally classed as being radioactive at all.

But the Stop the Dump campaign argue that this testing was flawed and insufficient, and have been seeking enhanced environmental information over the proposals to dump 300,000 tonnes of marine sediment into the site.

Speaking on behalf of the campaign, marine radioactivity specialist Tim Deere-Jones said: “Recent claims of alarmism made by the nuclear industry against the Stop the Dump Campaign are nothing more than an attempt to hide the fact that the industry has no answers to the concerns raised by both the campaign and AMs on the Senedd petitions committee.”

Stop the Dump argue that those participating in the consultation process have not produced definitive information as to the amount of radioactivity present in the sediments, or the impact it will have on those exposed to it.

The chairman of the Welsh Assembly’s environment committee, Mike Hedges AM, has called for further testing of the sediment.