NUCLEA R POWER: TIM E TO EN D TH E EXPERIMEN T

The nuclear programme since 1976 may not have been as large as once feared, but the industry has been left with a free hand to continue producing its toxic waste, despite having absolutely no idea where to put it. For decades the industry has claimed it could 'dispose' of its nuclear wastes by burying them deep underground. Yet, after spending £450 millionsof public money, plans to start digging the first phase of the UK's nuclear waste dump at Sellafield were rejected by the Secretary of State for the Environment in March 1997.9 This decision, and the evidence that led to it, signals the failure of the concept of deep disposal of long-lived radioactive waste. There is clear­ ly no sustainable solution for radioactive waste, so no new nuclear waste should be created. Waste that already exists should be stored above ground in managed, monitored dry stores on existing nuclear sites. It should be retrievable so that problems can be dealt with or technologies improved.

In the US, under the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act, the government ordered utilities to pay 0.1 cents per kilowatt-hour of electricity generated by their nuclear plants to offset the costs of a nationwide repository programme, to be opened in 1998. With $4 billion spent and little to show, the utilities pressed for interim above-ground centralised storage in a 'Monitored Retrievable Storage' installation, preferably sited in New Mexico on land belonging to native peoples. That scheme too has now been rejected.10

To date, the radioactive waste, including spent fuel, from the world's nuclear plants, contains some 100 billion curies, all of which has to be isolated from the environment for centuries to come. This is 1,000 times more radioactivity than was blown out from the core of Chernobyl.

Reprocessing - the Emperor with No Clothes Aside from running the UK's ancient Magnox reactors, BNFL run the notorious Sellafield (nee Windscale) site. Until its rel­ atively recent expansion into the US, BNFL's main business was reprocessing. Reprocessing separates plutonium and unused uranium from spent nuclear waste fuel. It is a process that is completely unnecessary, and far more expensive than storing the spent fuel once it is discharged from a reactor. A host of recent events have severely damaged the long-term prospects for reprocessing. From the decision of the new Ger­ man government to phase out nuclear power to the commit­ ment made by north-east Atlantic States to achieve "substantial reductions" in radioactive discharges to the marine environ­ ment by 2000, the writing is on the wall for reprocessing.

BNFL's spent nuclear waste fuel reprocessing business ought to be on its last legs. You might even be able to hear BNFL employees saying as much in private. Neil Baldwin, head of reprocessing at Sellafield recently admitted to Sunday Business that, because of problems, its new Thermal Oxide Reprocessing Plant (THORP) would struggle to meet the tenyear target on which the plant's £500m profit forecast is based." Although BNFL still, rather optimistically, believes THORP will make a profit, the performance of the plant has cast a shadow over the future of reprocessing. With part-pri­ vatisation looming, the company now envisages its growth coming from decommissioning, clean-up work and providing services to existing nuclear power stations. Through its Amer­ ican arm, BNFL Inc, the company has already secured decom­ missioning contracts in the States worth more than $8bn.

Yet, with an almost-religious fervour BNFL maintains its obsession with a highly dangerous radio-toxic element which can be used to make nuclear weapons - plutonium. Originally it was thought that the plutonium separated during reprocess­

ing would be used in fast reactors - apart from that required for nuclear weapons programmes. Fast reactors were the alchemist's dream: they would generate as much fuel as they consumed while producing electricity. But dreams transform into nightmares, and the problem with fast reactors is their potential for massive explosions and catastrophic contamina­ tion of millions of hectares of land. Not one fast reactor has operated satisfactorily. Sodium leakages and fires have plagued fast reactors in the UK, the Soviet Union and Japan. France's Superphenix has proved to be an economic and oper­ ational disaster. The Dounreay Prototype Fast Reactor is now being decommissioned, and the Japanese fast breeder reactor at Monju, has been closed since an accident in 1995. It is not clear when, or even whether, it will start up again.

Without fast reactors, the reprocessing industry needs to invent new justifications to continue its crazy practice of sepa­ rating plutonium from spent nuclear waste fuel. Sellafield now has a stockpile of 90 tonnes of weapons-usable plutonium and this figure is expected to grow to 150 tonnes by 2010.12 BNFL argues that reprocessing is a form of recycling:

"Reprocessing used fuel recovers 97 per cent of valuable, reusable materials and separates out the remaining 3 per cent which is ultimately waste. The reusable material is uranium and plutonium, which can be recycled to produce Mixed Oxide (MOX) fuel." 1 3

Reprocessed uranium actually makes up the bulk of the material separated during reprocessing. Spent fuel may contain one per cent plutonium at most. However, there is a very poor commercial case for recycling this uranium. BNFL was plan­ ning a new facility at Springfields to manufacture fuel from it, but work has been suspended because of a lack of interest from its customers.14 The lack of demand arises because fuel fabri­ cated using reprocessed uranium is significantly more expen­ sive than that made from fresh uranium, because it has to be processed separately from fresh uranium on account of conta­ mination problems. Furthermore, an oversupply of uranium on the market means that this position is likely to persist for the foreseeable future.15

Nuclear Smuggling Theft of fissile material has become a terrifying prospect with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Rensselaer Lee, in Smuggling Armageddon (St Martin's Press, 1998), points out that "nuclear crime was uncommon in the Soviet period", but that, with the loss of status and special salaries once enjoyed by the thousands working in military nuclear complexes, survival is driving many to steal. According to data from the International Atomic Energy Agency, 132 confirmed incidents of international nuclear smuggling took place between 1993 and 1996. In 1993, two nuclear warheads were actually stolen from a weapons assembly plant in the Urals, but were later recovered. And just as disturbing, credible reports indicate that "criminal groups have commandeered the isotope separation services of Russian nuclear plants to expedite exports of enriched reactor-grade and weapons-grade uranium to various end-user countries in the Middle East and South Asia."

Lee records one case of an engineer working at the Luch's Scientific-Production Association in Podolsk, who managed to steal a total of 1.5 kilograms of weapons-grade uranium on more than 20 separate occasions. The man was later arrested. About 30 tonnes of separated plutonium are stored in some 12,000 flasks at the Chelyabinsk nuclear facility. Safeguarding such a quantity of fissile material is a major security problem.

It is a nonsense to believe that burning plutonium in a reac-

388

The Ecologist, Vol. 29, No 7, November 1999
NUCLEA R POWER: TIM E TO EN D TH E EXPERIMEN T

| dangerous, perhaps a hundred times more, than is accounted for | by such organisations as the International Commission on £ Radiological Protection (ICRP). That makes the nuclear indus­

try far dirtier and more dangerous than it likes to think.

An inspection into the state of intermediate level radioactive waste in the UK by the Health and Safety Executive has revealed that, at 22 sites across the UK, waste is in danger of leaking and in some instances could even go 'critical' and explode. Neglect and shoddy practice is now dogging the industry, and clean-up operations wil l cost billions of pounds. Last year saw the Atomic Energy Authority pilloried for its mismanagement of nuclear materials at Dounreay, and the Ministry of Defence for more than 100 "serious and quality failures in just three months last year" at its weapons-manu­ facturing site at Aldermaston.18 Decades of neglect have turned Sellafield into the most contaminated radioactive site in West­ ern Europe. In its report, the Health and Safety Executive reveals overheating problems and leakage of radioactive cont­ aminated water into the ground from raw, untreated nuclear waste, much of it the legacy of Britain's haste to manufacture nuclear weapons.

With extraordinary prescience, the Smithsonian Institution once proclaimed that nuclear power would be a "short-lived" phenomenon. As we head into the next century, we must fulfil that prediction. Decommissioning and clean-up should now be the nuclear industry's only role, along with sealing its danger­ ous plutonium into an inaccessible form, such as with vitrified high-level waste. But none of this new effort will ever com­ pensate the people of the late twentieth century for the escape of plutonium and other radionuclides into our environment.•

The Chernobyl reactor after the 1986 disaster - a long distance photograph

tor will actually get rid of it. On the contrary, although plutoni­ um is consumed, more gets generated in the reactor and, by means of reprocessing, the problem of environmental contami­ nation and security is perpetuated. After denying for years that reactor-grade plutonium can be used to make a successful atom­ ic warhead, the UK Government finally accepted that it could in 1997.16The US actually exploded such a device in 1962.17

A Legacy of Contamination Chernobyl is a constant reminder of the risks we are taking by keeping the nuclear industry alive. But without close follow-up of all the victims of Chernobyl, including those across Western Europe who were also exposed to fallout, we will never know the full extent of the harm done. The overall cost in monetary terms will amount to tens of billions of dollars, probably more than the total construction cost of all the Soviet Union's nuclear plants. The nuclear establishment is loath to admit to any additional cancers, congenital malformations and deaths from Chernobyl. Yet, where public health records are suppos­ edly good, as in Bavaria, we now have evidence that the fall­ out caused a significant increase in stillbirths and in infant mortality. Even so, the authorities tried to cover up, and it is thanks to such as Richard Webb, who revealed the incompetent defects in the epidemiological models used, that the truth has come out.

It is not just the risks of major accidents that should concern us. Even under normal operation, the industry is contaminating our environment. The French reprocessing plant at La Hague, for example, spews 230 million litres of radioactive waste into the English Channel every year. As Chris Busby, Rosalie Bertell and others show in this issue, low-dose radiation is far more

Pete Roche has a degree in Ecological Science from Edinburgh University and has been a nuclear campaigner for Greenpeace UK since 1991. Previously, he worked for SCRAM (The Scottish Campaign to Resist the Atomic Menace). Peter Bunyard is Science Editor of The Ecologist.

References: 1. HSE, Calder Hall and Chapelcross Nuclear Power Stations. The Findings of the

Nil' s Assessment of BNFL's Long-Term Safety Review. HMSO 1990. And Hurst, M . J. and Thomas, D. J., Report on Radioactive Discharges and Environmental Monitoring at Nuclear Power Stations during 1991. Nuclear Electric Report HSD/OSB/R/004, 1992. 2. BNFL's Annual Report on Discharges and Monitoring of the Environment 1997. 3. Fairlie, I , Radioactive Waste: International Examination of Storage and

Reprocessing of Spent Fuel. PhD Thesis. Imperial College of Science Technology and Medicine. London. September 1997. 4. Kronick, C. The Ecologist, Vol.29 No.2 (March/April 1999). 5. Hollins,P.,'Outloook for the Nuclear Generator', speech to the IEA Conference,

"Strategies for Success in a Competitive Market', 17 November 1998. 6. Barker, F. 'The Prospects for New Nuclear Build'. Consortium of Opposing Local

Authorities Briefing Number 34, January 1999. 7. Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution 6th Report. Chairman Sir Brian

Flowers. 'Nuclear Power and the Environment' September 1976. HMSO, Cmnd 6618, p.202. 8. POST (1997) 'Radioactive Waste - Where Next?' p.32. 9. Letter to Director David Brown (Nirex) from the Government Office of the North

West, 17 March 1997. 10. Makhijani, A. & Saleska, S. The Nuclear Power Deception, The Apex Press, 1999. 11. "BNFL broadens base for sell-off by Cavenagh, A. Sunday Business 13th June

1999. 12. An R&D Strategy for the Disposal of High-Level Radioactive Waste and Spent

Nuclear Fuel. By QuantiSci Ltd. For the Dept Environment Transport and the Regions. June 1999 version. (The report remains unpublished) p.8. 13. BNFL Media Brief January 1999. 14. BNFL response by Gareth Thomas to an email from Fred Barker, 3 November

1998. 15. See for example the review of the uranium market in Nuclear Engineering

International, September 1998, pp. 12-19. 16. House of Lords Hansard Written Answers, WA184 24th July 1997. 17. US DoE Facts, 'Additional Information Concerning Underground Nuclear Weapon

Test of Reactor-Grade Plutonium', 27th June 1994. 18. Sunday Telegraph, 21 February 1999.

The Ecologist, Vol. 29, No 7, November 1999

389