THREE Herefordshire communities were earmarked as potential dumping grounds for nuclear waste during the 1980s, according to previously secret documents published this month.

Pontrilas, Credenhill, and Moreton-on-Lugg feature on a list of 537 sites seen as suitable to store up to 250,000 cubic metres of radioactive materials underground for up to 100,000 years.

The list, drawn up by a team of government geologists and other specialists, was released by the independent nuclear waste agency Nirex under the Freedom of Information Act.

Nirex said that the proposed burial programme was abandoned in 1997. The Herefordshire sites - then all owned by the Crown - did not make the shortlist.

About 100,000 tonnes of nuclear waste is stored above ground at 34 locations around the UK.

Friends of the Earth (FoE) - involved in the campaign to get the Nirex papers released - claims that the tonnage will rise in volume five times over the next hundred years, even assuming no new nuclear power stations are built.

Long-term plans put all the waste in a deep dump, for which a location has yet to be found. A committee on radioactive waste management is due to report its recommendations next July.

According to the FoE, new scientific understanding and computing capability mean "complicated" sites ruled out 15 years ago could now come into consideration.

But Chris Crean, of West Midlands FoE, said the Herefordshire sites were unlikely to feature in any new plans.

"Having been ruled out at the first stage last time, they would certainly be a long way down the pecking order," he said.

The Nirex papers show that geology kept Credenhill, Moreton-on-Lugg, and Pontrilas - all assessed between 1981-1984 - off the original shortlist.

Credenhill - then home to RAF Hereford and now a base for the SAS - and Moreton-on-Lugg - then an army ordnance depot, now an industrial park and development land - were listed as Ministry of Defence (MoD) sites.

Pontrilas, an SAS training base, was listed as land used by both the MoD and Department of the Environment.

Moreton camp did take toxic waste in 1987 when the Hereford Times revealed how around 3,000 drums of contaminated soil from Channel Tunnel workings were stored there. The drums were eventually removed in a row that went all the way to Whitehall.

In the 1990s Moreton also saw off a plan to store the rendered remains of cattle culled because of BSE.