N-Base Briefing 366

Government advisers criticise Drigg waste plan

Government advisers on the Radioactive Waste Management Advisory Committee (RWMAC) have criticised plans to take waste from Dounreay to the Drigg nuclear dump in north-west England.

They also renewed their doubts about the safety of existing low level waste facilities at Dounreay and the possibility they may need to be emptied - and raised the question of waste from other sites being imported to Dounreay.

RWMAC has published two reports on the scale of the UK's nuclear waste problem and the future management of the wastes - see 366.3 for more details. However, the advisers highlight Dounreay as a major problem which has to be tackled because it is to date by far the largest nuclear complex to be decommissioned in the UK.

In the existing low level pits at Dounreay there are 33,000 cubic metres of waste - one pit has just 100 cubic metres of space left, but all dumping there was stopped by the 1998 safety audit. It is expected that another 80,000 cubic metres will be produced during decommissioning - of which just over half would be classified as very low level waste.

However, because the storage of low-level waste, rather than its disposal, is contrary to UK Government policy, and it will be many years before any new facility is built at Dounreay, the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate and the Scottish Environment Protection Agency have said some of the waste should be taken to the Drigg national dump near Sellafield. The UKAEA has already applied to SEPA to transport about 750 cubic metres of waste a year and a public consultation is expected this year.

But this approach is rejected by the members of RWMAC - they argue longer-term solutions need considering rather than the quick-fix of transporting waste to Drigg. "The management of Dounreay wastes...needs early consideration and decisions. Because national policy issues are involved such decisions must involve the UK Government and the Devolved Administrations, rather than just the regulatory bodies."

The new Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (see News in Brief), which will be responsible for both Dounreay and Drigg, should undertake an urgent assessment of the country's low-level waste disposal requirements. RWMAC says the NII and SEPA proposal to send some Dounreay waste to Drigg "raises some potentially fundamental issues of longer-term policy...[and] there is a danger of national policy effectively being pre-empted by specific regulatory decisions." It also "gives the impression of policy being made 'on the hoof' by the regulators".

"There is then the question of whether it is right to move large volumes of radioactive waste over long distances, and across national borders, from a site where the waste was generated, and which has benefited from past employment opportunities, to place further pressure on the Drigg facility." Communities far from Dounreay, and across national borders, would be affected if waste was taken to Drigg.

The RWMAC report adds a further warning: "If this is allowed, the possible future implications for ILW and high-level waste must also be considered."

RWMAC states that it does not believe that moving very large volumes of waste, at the lower end of the LLW activity range, from one site to another is "likely to be an effective and efficient" way of managing the wastes. Instead there should be serious consideration of how wastes which has very low activity (VLLW) can be disposed on or close to the site where it was produced.

RWMAC states that "the destiny of Dounreay wastes is a fundamental question in relation to the management of LLW within the UK." Urgent decisions need to be made about new waste facilities at or near Dounreay. And one of the additional questions any new facility might raise, the RWMAC report mentions, is the possibility of waste from other sites being taken there for disposal.

The opinion of RWMAC that the VLLW and LLW might be disposed of at, or near, where it is produced is very much in line with the attitude of environmental groups and local authorities in the Highlands and Islands. Shetland Islands Council, for example, recently agreed to oppose any transporting of wastes to Drigg, arguing the Dounreay and the local communities must accept responsibility for the waste it creates. However, the council, like other bodies, strongly opposes any other wastes being imported to Dounreay.
Existing pits - how safe are they ? In 2000 RWMAC argued that "the longer term sustainability" of the existing waste pits at Dounreay needed examination, including whether their location, close to an eroding foreshore, and condition could pass "a rigorous post-closure safety assessment" - known as a PCSC. RWMAC was "sceptical" that the pits would pass a PCSC and the possibility the waste in the pits might have to be dug up "could not be ruled out".

This new RWMAC report states that "past disposal practices at Dounreay sometimes fell short of what would be acceptable today...there is a significant degree of uncertainty about the detail of the contents of some pits and variability in the quality assurance of some historic disposals." RWMAC says it is necessary to decide "whether the existing Dounreay disposal pits can sustain a rigorous PCSC assessment and, if not, what is to happen to the wastes contained within them."

* The full RWMAC reports on nuclear wastes are available at www.defra.gov.uk/rwmac/press/p030324.htm

Legal action denied...

The Scottish Environment Protection Agency has denied that it has started legal action about the UK Atomic Energy Authority for the widespread contamination of the environment by hundreds of thousands of radioactive particles which were released into the environment for several decades. SEPA said it had not submitted a report to the procurator fiscal, but it would be taking "appropriate enforcement action".

...more particles found

Four more radioactive 'hotspot' particles have been found on the Sandside beach in the past two weeks. This brings to 33 the total number found since 1984 - 11 of which have been found since regulators ordered a temporary increase in monitoring at the end of February. Monitoring of the beach has now dropped back to original levels and the Scottish Environment Protection Agency says it will not be ordering further increased monitoring at present.

Plutonium accident

News of an accident in the D8550 criticality facility at Dounreay last November when a contractor inhaled plutonium only because public recently with the publication of a quarterly report from the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate which is still investigating the incident. Only shortly before the incident the UKAEA had announced the start of the final stages of decommissioning work at the D8550 facility, stating that radiation levels had been reduced sufficiently for staff to enter the plant safely. Scotland Against Nuclear Dumping convener Lorraine Mann said the secrecy surrounding the incident showed little had changed at Dounreay.

New waste 'discovered' - landfill might be an option

Reports from the Radioactive Waste Management Advisory Committee have criticised the UK's present inventory of radioactive waste. Huge quantities of low level decommissioning wastes are not included in the present inventory. The government advisers also say the scale of contaminated waste from decommissioning Dounreay, Sellafield, reactors and other sites, is so large "some form of in-situ management will ultimately be necessary" and local landfill sites and incineration to reduce the volume of wastes will also need to be considered. A landfill site at Clifton Marsh is already used for waste from BNFL's Capenhurst and Springfield sites, while Rolls Royce uses the Hilts Quarry for waste from its Derby works. Amersham and Devonport also use landfill sites.

The RWMAC reports say there are up to 10 million cubic metres of very low level radioactive waste at 20 sites, mainly that has not previously been included in UK waste totals. The vast majority of the waste has very low levels of contamination - which should be recognised as a new classification for radioactive waste and known as VLLW. In 2001 there were 15,700 cubic metres of low level waste and it was predicted that future arising amounted to a further 1,490,000 c.m.

Moving these vast quantities of waste to dumps would be expensive - even if there were dumps ready to receive it - and the committee suggests leaving this 'very low level' waste on site in covered artificial hills. Another option is to dump very low level waste in landfill sites.

RWMAC argues that the UK's one national dump, at Drigg near Sellafield, is too valuable a resource to be filled up with building rubble and contaminated soil from decommissioning work. Drigg has about 800,000 cubic metres of remaining capacity which is expected to last 50 years if it is not used for very low level waste.

The full RWMAC reports on nuclear wastes are available at www.defra.gov.uk/rwmac/press/p030324.htm

MPs criticise Government's energy white paper

The House of Commons science and technology select committee has published a highly critical report on the Government's energy white paper. The report says Government renewable targets cannot be met with the present the lack of finance for research and development and the lack of commitment to developing renewable energy. It calls for a new Renewable Energy Authority, with strong ministerial support, to try and meet renewable targets, and it should focus on developing offshore technologies for wind, wave and tidal energy. The MPs are also critical of the white paper's position on nuclear energy, arguing that the nuclear option can only be kept open, as ministers say they want, if the industry is given a clear message that it has a future in the UK. A new generation of nuclear reactors could be used to keep greenhouse gas emissions to low as possible and there should be continued investment in the development of fusion power. The full report is available at - www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200203/cmselect/cmsctech/55/5502.htm

New name - new headquarters...

The agency to be responsible for the UK's nuclear waste and decommissioning nuclear sites has been renamed from the Liabilities Management Authority to the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) - and the Government has said its headquarters will be in Cumbria, close to Sellafield. The NDA will become responsible for the whole of Dounreay and much of the Sellafield site including the reprocessing plants and all waste stores. Legislation to establish the NDA is expected later this year.

...new fund approved...

Energy minister Brian Wilson this week announced proposals for financing the GBP48 billion decommissioning and clean-up costs for the UK nuclear industry, in particular Sellafield and Dounreay. The Government is to establish a 'statutory segregated account' to finance the work of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority. Mr Wilson said the Government was now looking at ways the new account can provide the necessary rolling funding needs for the decommissioning work "beyond the normal public spending cycle."

...and a new committee

The UK Government is looking for a chairperson and members for a new Committee on Radioactive Waste Management (CoRWM) which was formally announced in the House of Commons by environment minister Michael Meacher at the end of March. The job of the new committee will be to recommend to the Government and the Scottish and Welsh executives a strategy for dealing with radioactive waste. Details and application forms are available at www.kmcinternational.co.uk or by e-mail at corwmresponse@kmcinternational.co.uk

OSPAR talks

Preparations for the first OSPAR annual meeting to be attended by environment ministers since the Sintra meeting in Portugal five years ago continued last month. Heads of the national delegations met in Berlin to try and move towards agreement on a range of issues before the summer meeting of ministers. Discussions on radioactive issues continue to focus on the commitments made at Sintra in 1998 and the interpretation of the agreement, in particular the baseline to be used for 'background' or 'historic' levels of radioactivity in the environment.

Plutonium plans

British Nuclear Fuels has confirmed that is talking to British Energy about the possibility of using plutonium MOX fuel in its Sizewell, Heysham 2 and Torness reactors. The news emerged this week in a report from a 'BNFL National Stakeholder Dialogue' working group on the future of the UK's plutonium stockpile. The 'stakeholder dialogue' was organised by The Environment Council and involved representatives of BNFL, regulators and environmental interests. The report took over three years to prepare but not surprisingly it fails to make any hard recommendations - instead the two options for the future of the plutonium, 'immobilising' it, or using it for reactor fuel, reflects the standpoint of the industry and environmental interests. The full report is available at www.the-environment-council.org.uk

All stop

By the middle of this month all 17 reactors operated by Japan's Tokyo Electric power company will be shut for safety checks.

EU legal threat

The European Commission is threatening to take legal against the UK over the decision last year to authorise the disposal of radioactive wastes from the Devonport dockyard in Plymouth where nuclear submarines are refitted and serviced. The Commission has complained that the UK failed to notify it of the disposal plans and failed to apply the EU rule on 'justification' that requires an examination of the benefits of any proposal compared with its potential detrimental effects.

Shares rise

British Energy shares have risen slightly after the company announced it had reached agreement with bondholders to freeze payments of its debts.

Plant shut

The Fugen fast reactor in Japan was closed at the end of March - and the country's only other fast reactor, at Monju, has been shut since an accident in 1995 and sustained local opposition.