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UK subjected to only limited IAEA inspections

IRNA

London, Dec 4, IRNA -- The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) 
can carry out limited inspections of only Britain`s civilian and not 
military nuclear facilities, Energy Minister Stephen Timms has 
revealed. 
"The IAEA can designate any UK civil nuclear facility, or any part
thereof, for safeguards inspection visits but has no right of access 
to nuclear material required for national security and sites such as 
Aldermaston" where nuclear weapons are made, he told MPs Wednesday. 
Timms was responding to a written parliamentary question from 
Liberal Democrat MP Mike Hancock on whether IAEA visits include 
military sites or the inspection of plutonium stored at Aldermaston 
base and the Sellafield reprocess plant in northwest England. 
He said that the IAEA had the right to inspect the plutonium 
stored at Sellafield that was transferred from Aldermaston and brought
into safeguards following the conclusion of the 1998 Strategic Defense
Review. 
But added that it `currently chooses to limit its inspections to 
the plutonium in the Thermal Oxide Reprocessing Plant plutonium 
product store (at Sellafield) and the Magnox Special Nuclear Material 
Store 9`. 
HC/AH/210 
End