All-Wales Euro MP Jill Evans has written to Geoff Hoon, Minister of State for Defence, and to the National Assembly Minister for the Environment, Sue Essex to establish whether depleted uranium or radioactive material has been deposited at any landfill sites in Wales.

Depleted uranium has been used at the Cardiff Atomic Weapons Establishment in Llanishen in the manufacturing of Trident nuclear warheads. The site is currently being decommissioned, but it has been admitted that 174 tonnes of "low level waste" from the site has been transported along public roads to licensed landfill sites. It is not known where these are located.

Jill Evans, who is a member of the European Parliamentary Committee for the Environment and Public Health said,

"We urgently need to establish whether depleted uranium and other radioactive waste from AWE Cardiff has been deposited at Welsh landfill sites. It was disclosed this week that thirty thousand bags of nuclear waste containing depleted uranium are to be dumped on a municipal waste site three miles from Preston and we need assurances that this has not been happening in Wales.

"Depleted uranium can cause organ damage, cancers and genetic mutation when inhaled or ingested as dust. Any site where depleted uranium is or has been used puts the workforce and their families at risk and contaminates the land forever.

"A fire at such a site could cause the devestating release of deadly uranium oxide which could harm the whole population of large areas. Radioactive dust knows no boundaries, as we in Wales already know from Chernobyl."

Jill Evans is backing calls by CND Cymru for the government to disclose the whereabouts of contaminated landfill sites.