AN MP last night said she had won an assurance that her coastal constituency would not be used as a port for shipping nuclear waste.

Redcar MP Vera Baird wrote to Nirex, the company which manages the UK's intermediate-level radioactive waste, after the town was included in a list of potential dumping sites it published earlier this month.

The secret plans, drawn up in the 1980s, were later abandoned, but proposed that waste would be shipped from Redcar and then buried underneath the sea bed off the North-East coast.

Ms Baird said she had received an undertaking that Redcar would not feature as a shipping port in any future site selection exercise carried out by Nirex.

In any case, the burial of nuclear waste at sea has since been made illegal under international conventions.

Ms Baird said: "I was determined whatever to wrench an undertaking from Nirex that we would never again be on their list as a port for the accumulation of nuclear waste prior to export."