A JETTY should be built near Bradwell Power Station to stop nuclear waste from being transported across the Dengie, it has been claimed.

Controversial plans to allow Magnox to remove a planning condition barring it from storing waste removed from other plants at Bradwell was approved by Essex County Council in August.

The decision means that intermediate waste containing sludge, sand, gravel and metal can be transported from Sizewell in Suffolk and Dungeness in Kent.

Residents fear the waste, which will travel in large lorries across the Dengie, including from Southminster railway station, will cause traffic chaos.

Burnham resident, Una Longson, believes a better solution would be to build a jetty at the power station, and transport the waste in via the water.

She said: “It would eliminate a lot of the worries that people currently have about the plans.

“If they were only going to do the reprocessing for six months then it wouldn’t be worth it, but they are doing it for the foreseeable future.

“You would have all these lorries going back and forth through the villages, but with a jetty you avoid that. The extra traffic that everyone was moaning about would no longer be an issue.

“I can see them coming out and saying it is a security issue but it must be more secure to take it around the water than through a public road in the back of a lorry.”

A spokesman for Magnox said: “The delivery of Intermediate Level Waste to Bradwell from Dungeness and Sizewell by sea, including the construction of a temporary jetty was discounted in the early stages of strategic options for regional waste storage.

“The construction of temporary jetties at each of the sites would have required significant additional investment and prolonged the time needed to complete the work.

“The proposed transfers to site will be undertaken during the lowest daytime background traffic movements, where practicable.”

The spokesman said deliveries would avoid school rush hours.