Long unhappy about pollution from Britain’s Sellafield nuclear power plant, Norway announced yesterday that it would call for a binding international agreement to force polluting countries to pay for toxic cleanups beyond their own borders. The nation’s foreign affairs committee voted unanimously to ask the government to impose economic sanctions on the U.K. until radioactive emissions from Sellafield cease. Traces of the radioactive compound technetium-99 originating from Sellafield have been found along the entire Norwegian coastline. Norway’s environment minister, Boerge Brende, has been a force behind the effort to create a U.N. high commissioner for the environment and a unified system of environmental treaties.
