N-Base Briefing 163

N-BASE BRIEFING 163 - 17th January 1999

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Germany agrees end of reprocessing

The new Social Democrat-Green government agreed last week to take legal action to end the reprocessing contracts with Sellafield and La Hague. Announcing the government's 1999 programme, Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said reprocessing would end and spent fuel already in the UK or France would need to be moved to interim storage. The announcement brought an angry response from Sellafield operators British Nuclear Fuels and the UK government who both argue the reprocessing contracts are legally binding.

There will be intense negotiations between all the companies involved and the three governments and it is unclear what exactly will happen to the spent fuel already delivered to the reprocessing plants.

The decision to end reprocessing from 1st January 2000 is a blow to BNFL and its THORP plant which would lose about 12 per cent of its baseload order book and around 40 per cent of the plant's second 10-year orderbook

New THORP closure ends BNFL target hopes

British Nuclear Fuels has announced that a blocked pipe closed the THORP repressing plant on 17th December. For the first time in the plant's near five-year operating history, the company has admitted it will fail to meet this year's production target of repressing 900 tonnes of spent fuel.

The blocked pipe is in the same system where a leak last year closed THORP for five months. The problem is at the start of the reprocessing system when the cladding is cut off the fuel elements and the rods cut into pieces. It was metal fragments from this process which caused last year's problems and could now be blocking the one-inch pipe. Cumbrians Opposed to a Radioactive Environment (CORE) reported that the spare pipe system was already in use after last year's problems so no further back-up is available.

The admission by BNFL that it cannot meet this year's production target - together with warnings on a steep fall in revenue due to repeated closure of the site's reprocessing plants - is particularly significant. Since before its operation opponents have argued that THORP would be unable to meet BNFL predictions of 7,000 tonnes in the first 10 years operations resulting in profits of GBP500 million. Now the company's confidence is beginning to look increasingly misplaced. Since starting work THORP has reprocessed only 1,455 tonnes instead of the 2,800 required to meet the 10-year target. to make up the difference BNFL would have to reprocess at the rate of 900 tonnes a year.

Tritium problems

BNFL has also admitted to CORE that since the leaking pipe accident last year no fuel for UK advanced gas-cooled reactors had been reprocessed by THORP and was unlikely to be until summer 1999. Currently only foreign BWR fuel has been reprocessed, confirming CORE's assertions that THORP's operational problems are not only the wear-and-tear effects of metal particles on pipes, but also the production of unexpected volumes of tritium vapour.

Attention focuses on radioactive 'hotspots'

Major concerns about the scale of seabed contamination off Dounreay has been expressed by Scotland Against Nuclear Dumping(SAND). As well as the hundreds of 'hotspots' found on the foreshore below the site, and the three discovered on the Sandside public beach, over 120 particles have been found by divers surveying sandbanks off Dounreay. This discovery led to a ban on fishing within two kilometres of Dounreay.

SAND spokeswoman Lorraine Mann said she believed thousands of particles could be lying on the seabed and she criticised the scale and speed of Dounreay's work to monitor and deal with the problem. Ms Mann said only a tiny part of the seabed had been surveyed. "It is an absolute disgrace that no more than five per cent of the potentially affected area of seabed has been surveyed to date. Dounreay's operators have known of this problem since 1984."

Dredging the seabed ?

Dounreay's management is understood to be considering the idea of dredging the sandbanks and checking the material for radioactive particles which could be retained and disposed off on-shore. However, there must be concerns whether such an operation could disturb particles in the sandbanks and result in them being deposited over an even wider area.

Two more 'hotspots' found

Two new radioactive 'hotspots' have been found by monitors on the foreshore below Dounreay, making nearly 200 since the early 1980s. The radioactive particles were found by monitors.

In reply to a parliamentary question by SNP environment spokeswoman Roseanna Cunningham the Scottish environment minister Calum Macdonald said the National Radiological Protection Board had estimated the chances of a local person collecting fishing bait on a local beach encountering a radioactive 'hotspot' was 1 in 200,000. Ms Cunningham attacked the delays in cleaning the beaches when there was a much bigger chance of someone finding a radioactive particle than winning the UK lottery.

The 'definitive' report

Meantime the Committee on Medical Aspects of Radiation in the Environment (COMARE) has promised that its report on any possible link between the 'hotspot' contamination and increased childhood leukaemia levels, which is due to be published in March, will be "the definitive document" on the issue. After previous reports on the leukaemia cluster a stream of new previously undisclosed information has been published, causing COMARE to complain to government about information being withheld from its members.

Dounreay News in Brief

New estate

A new industrial estate may be built alongside the Dounreay nuclear complex to accommodate the growing number of commercial companies working on the decommissioning of the site.

New contractors

The four-year contract to maintain the now closed Prototype Fast Reactor has been won by Alstom Automation - which was part of the GEC engineering group. Alstom will take over the contract in April from AEA Technology.

News in Brief

Magnox plant starts-up

The B205 Magnox reprocessing plant at Sellafield has re-started work after being closed due to a problem with the crane equipment in the section which supplies spent fuel to the plant.

OSPAR meeting

The OSPAR Radioactive Substances Working Group will meet in Dublin next week from 19-22 January when civil servants will discuss the implementation of the OSPAR ministerial agreement last year to make substantial reductions or the elimination of radioactive discharges by 2000 and then reduce them to near background levels. Attention will focus on the reprocessing industry which is responsible for over 90 per cent of discharges into the marine environment.

Swiss nuclear deal with Russia

Deals of secret negotiations between the EGL and NOK Swiss nuclear utilities and the Russian Ministry of Atomic Energy (MINATOM)have been published by Greenpeace Switzerland. Last years negotiations concerned the export of 2,000 tonnes of spent fuel from Switzerland to Russia for storage and possible reprocessing - with the waste remaining in Russia and the plutonium being returned for use in MOX fuel.

Turkish radiation incident

About a dozen people have been hospitalised in Istanbul following a radiation incident involving scrap metal. Two two-tonne blocks of lead were apparently bought by a scrap metal company and cut open before it was realised they contained a cobolt-60 source. The incident has caused particular concern because of the new EURATOM directive which will allow contaminated radioactive metal to be re-cycled and reused for consumer goods.

Gulf War study

A study by scientists at London medical schools has found that veterans of the Gulf War are twice as likely to suffer health problems as soldiers who served in Bosnia or those sent to the Gulf but not deployed. However the researchers from Guy's, Kings and St Thomas's Medical School found there was no particular pattern to the problems suffered by the veterans to support the existence of Gulf War Syndrome.

Supreme Court hearing

The Russian Supreme Court will consider the case of the ex-Naval officer Alexander Nikitin who has been charged with spying while working for the Norwegian environmental organisation Bellona on the problems associated with the former Soviet Union's nuclear submarine fleet. At a trial in St Petersburg the court sent the case back to the prosecutor because the charges were too vague. Now the Supreme Court will consider appeals from the prosecutor and Mr Nikitin and decide whether to support the original decision for the prosecutor to investigate further, dismiss the charges altogether, or reject the court's ruling and send the case back for trial. See www.bellona/no for more information.