OSLO (Reuters) - Norway has urged Britain to close its Sellafield nuclear reprocessing plant following reports that radioactive pollution along Norwegian shores has increased.

"We are putting pressure on British authorities to put an end to emissions from Sellafield," Environment Minister Siri Bjerke told Reuters. "The Sellafield plant should be shut down."

The Norwegian Radiation Protection Authority said it found the concentration of the radioactive substance technetium-99 along the country's coastline had risen sixfold since 1996.

State-owned British Nuclear Fuel (BNFL) has been under sustained international pressure to close down its Thorp reprocessing plant at Sellafield after a number of safety scares, but so far Britain's Labour government has not budged.

Norway's Labour government now fears that the country's fishing industry will be hit by the increases in the emissions of technetium-99 from Sellafield.

Bjerke said she brought up the high levels of radioactive emissions from Sellafield in a meeting with British Environment Minister Michael Meacher in February.

"And Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg will also address the issue when he meets with (Prime Minister) Tony Blair this summer," Bjerke said.

"Norway depends on a clean ocean and a productive coast, and the government finds it unacceptable when nuclear waste problems are leading to pollution of Norwegian coastal and ocean areas," she said.

Bjerke said current emission levels did not represent any immediate health risk or threat to the environment, but that the long-term consequences remained unknown. "Therefore it is of vital importance to use the precautionary principle," she said.

Bjerke said she was optimistic that British authorities would eventually bow to the pressure to shut Sellafield.

"Although our demands to British authorities have so far not resulted in any concrete advances, it is obvious that reprocessing of used reactor fuel is faced with an uphill struggle, politically as well as commercially," Bjerke said.

Norway says that traces of technetium-99 from Sellafield have turned up in marine life along its coasts ranging from seaweed to lobsters.