Nirex was a United Kingdom body set up in 1982 by the UK nuclear industry to examine safe, environmental and economic aspects of deep geological disposal of intermediate-level and low-level radioactive waste (LLRW).
During the mid-1980s proposals for low-level nuclear waste repositories at Billingham, Elstow, Bradwell, Fulbeck, and South Killingholme were abandoned due to local opposition.
In 1989, work began on two possible sites to take both intermediate and low-level waste near Dounreay in Caithness and near Sellafield in Cumbria.
Following preliminary investigations at both sites, Nirex announced plans in October 1992 to build a “Rock Characterisation Facility” (RCF) at Sellafield.
Implicitly Nirex feels unable to credit the notion that this barrier would fail; but the lack of any calculation based on an adverse, as distinct from a conservative, interpretation of this chemical containment seems to me to be an unfortunate omission from the emerging safety case, particularly having regard to FOE's impressive critique of the concept.".