Sellafield

[Guest guest]

A leak of highly radioactive nuclear fuel dissolved in concentrated nitric

acid, enough to half fill an Olympic-size swimming pool, has forced the

closure of Sellafield's Thorp reprocessing plant.

The highly dangerous mixture, containing about 20 tonnes of uranium and

plutonium fuel, has leaked through a fractured pipe into a huge stainless

steel chamber which is so radioactive that it is impossible to enter.

 

Recovering the liquids and fixing the pipes will take months and may require

special robots to be built and sophisticated engineering techniques devised

to repair the £2.1bn plant.

 

The leak is not a danger to the public but is likely to be a financial

disaster for the taxpayer since income from the Thorp plant, calculated to

be more than £1m a day, is supposed to pay for the cleanup of redundant

nuclear facilities.

 

The closure could hardly have come at a worse time for the nuclear industry.

Britain is struggling to meet its target of cutting greenhouse gas emissions

by 20% of 1990 levels by 2010, despite a substantial programme of wind farm

construction, while generating capacity will also be hit by the rundown of

some of Britain's coal-fired power stations.

 

The decision on whether to build a new generation of nuclear power stations

is among the most sensitive Tony Blair faces at the start of his third term.

 

A leak of a briefing paper to ministers on the nuclear option yesterday

revealed that the contribution new nuclear capacity could make to cutting

greenhouse gases had not yet been considered because of opposition from

Margaret Beckett, secretary of state for environment, food and rural

affairs.

 

The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, a quango which took over ownership of

the plant from British Nuclear Fuels on April 1, has a £2.2bn cleanup budget

for this year, its first year of operation, of which £560m was to come from

the Thorp plant.

 

Richard Flynn, spokesman for the NDA, said: " If the income from the plant is

not forthcoming then obviously it will put back plans for cleaning up. "

 

On Friday the British Nuclear Group, a management company formed to run the

Sellafield site on behalf of the NDA, held a meeting with the government

safety regulator, the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate (NII), to discuss

how to mop up the leak and repair the pipe. The company has to get the

inspectors' approval before proceeding.

 

A problem at the plant was first noticed on April 19 when operators could

not account for all the spent fuel that had been dissolved in nitric acid.

It was supposed to be travelling through the plant to be measured and

separated into uranium, plutonium and waste products in a series of

centrifuges. Remote cameras scanning the interior of the plant found the

leak.

 

Although most of the material is uranium, the fuel contains about 200kg

(440lb) of plutonium, enough to make 20 nuclear weapons, and must be

recovered and accounted for to conform to international safeguards aimed at

preventing nuclear materials falling into the wrong hands. The liquid will

have to be siphoned off and stored until the works can be repaired, but a

method of doing this has yet to be devised.

 

The company has set up a board of inquiry to find out how the leak occurred.

The NII will set up a separate investigation and has the power to prosecute

if correct procedures have not been followed.

 

The Thorp plant produces uranium and plutonium from spent fuel in such large

quantities that only a tiny proportion of it can ever be reused for reactor

fuel. Its critics also claim it is uneconomic because it has never operated

to design capacity since it opened 12 years ago, and is years behind

schedule in fulfilling orders.

 

This has angered some customers and the British Nuclear Group is embroiled

in a court case with one of its customers, the German owners of the Brokdorf

power station, which is withholding fees of £2,772 a day for storage of

spent fuel, claiming it should have been reprocessed years ago.

 

In 12 years Thorp has reprocessed 5,644 tonnes of fuel from its first

10-year target of 7,000 tonnes. Last year it failed to reach its target of

725 tonnes, achieving 590.

 

Martin Forwood, of Cumbrians Opposed to Radioactive Environment, said the

NDA had been " naive " in placing trust on income from Thorp, given its track

record. " Reprocessing is blatantly incompatible with the official cleanup

remit of the NDA, which will now find itself out of pocket as a result of

the latest Thorp accident. The new owners would do the taxpayer the greatest

service by putting Thorp out of its misery and closing it once and for all. "

 

The managing director of British Nuclear Group, Sellafield, Barry Snelson,

who ordered the plant to be closed down, said: " Let me reassure people that

the plant is in a safe and stable state. "