Britain may take back BNFL's fuel from Japan

Britain is considering taking back from Japan the nuclear fuel that was at the centre of the scandal at BNFL's plant over falsified safety records.

Returning the fuel to Britain is one of the options that will be raised in a paper being drawn up between Japanese and British officials. The Deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott, said he had expressed the Government's regret in weekend talks in Japan with the new Prime Minister, Yoshiro Mori, over the falsified safety reports at Sellafield.

Mr Prescott has gone on the diplomatic mission to Japan to try to defuse the protests over the mixed oxide (Mox) fuel. Japan threatened to end its contract with BNFL, threatening the plant with closure, unless Britain accepted the return of the Mox fuel shipment.

The Independent has learnt that the return of the shipment is among the possibilities being considered by the Japanese and British officials working on the options paper to be published in a few weeks. However, Britain clearly favours persuading the Japanese to allow the shipment to stay with more safeguards.

Shipping the fuel back to Britain would require an armed escort at sea and the approval of the American Congress because the fuel originated in the United States. "DTI officials are in discussion with Japanese official regulators and a high- ranking delegation of civil servants will go to Japan in May to seek agreement on the way forward," said a spokesman for the Department of Trade and Industry.

After his talks with Mr Mori, Mr Prescott said on BBC radio: "I did express regret, of course, at what had happened at Sellafield and we have agreed with the Japanese government that we will be producing a document that will be showing a number of the options that can be agreed between us.

"That is well under way and I have assured him, of course, that we will treat it with the highest priority." He said they had not got into the detail of the Japanese threat to boycott further orders for BNFL. "He knows that the agreement and the options will be put to him in the next couple of weeks or so and he knows that we do treat it with the proper priority and that's what he expects of us and that's what we will do," said Mr Prescott.

The contentious consignment is currently stored at the Takahama power plant in central Japan. The talks took place during a meeting of environment ministers from the G8industrialised nations. Mr Prescott said: "Japan has agreed with us that they would await our report, which will be out in a number of weeks, and we will look at all those options.... The Prime Minister [Mr Mori] clearly accepted that."

Britain is due to publish a separate options paper on the long-term storage of nuclear waste from Sellafield, including a plan to keep it in deep storage under the earth.

A Lords select committee came down in favour of deep storage but urged the Government to seek a wide consensus before implementing the long-term plan.

Meanwhile, Ireland and Denmark have tabled proposals under the Ospar convention, the body that monitors marine pollution, to close the Sellafield plant, possibly by the end of June.