A Wasted Future: How the UK’s nuclear waste programme melted

[Oscar]

A Wasted Future: How the UK’s nuclear waste programme melted down

[ http://www.mkg.se/uploads/A_Wasted_Futu ... r_2013.pdf ]

Dr David Lowry 21 November 2013

Nuclear Waste Advisory Associates & Member of the UK energy minister’s Geological Disposal Implementation Board

Presentation to MKG (Swedish NGO Office for Nuclear Waste Review

(Miljöorganisationernas kärnavfallsgranskning) forum Stockholm, 21 November 2013

1. The holes that appeared in the national Managing Radioactive Waste Safely (MWRS) Programme

Background

Thirty years ago this month the United Kingdom government launched its first attempt to find a way to resolve the radioactive waste problem in Britain, when the so called NIREX (Nuclear Industry Radioactive Waste Executive) organization announced it was going to explore underground storage options in two locations, one in the south (Elstow, Bedfordshire), and one in the north (Billingham, Cleveland).

In February 1986, three more prospective sites were announced: Killingholme in Humberside, Bradwell in Essex and Fulbeck in Lincolnshire, all in the east of England. The Plan failed four years later, abandoned on the eve of a national General Election.

I want to explain now what happened next, by bringing the story forward to the beginning of 2013.

For several years, the solid nuclear waste management plan was taken forward in a process called the Managing Radioactive Waste Safely (MWRS) programme, which involved detailed stakeholder consultation with the only community (West Cumbria, near Sellafield) to volunteer itself as a possible site for subterranean storage/disposal of radioactive waste in a so-called Geological Disposal Facility (GDF).

I take up the story in the month (January this year) before the local councils in Cumbria are to take their decision whether to continue with the process.

[I have highlighted sections of articles that follow to emphasise the key points]

Here is an exchange of letters in the Cumbrian press that covers both Sellafield and nuclear waste issues:

SIR – Having read thoroughly the letter from David I Wood (December 27), I wanted to reassure your readers that we are very happy to share ‘all the relevant facts’ about the process for implementing a geological disposal facility.

We fully support the work of the MRWS Partnership, responding to their requests for information, attending all their meetings and supporting community drop in sessions in order to make ourselves as open and available as possible.

Mr Wood suggests that we have not been wholly frank in our statements suggesting that we have already decided to investigate Ennerdale Fell.

However, nothing could be further from the truth. The position is that we would investigate any sites or areas that have been volunteered by the community. Mr Ellis was simply stating the fact that if Ennerdale is volunteered we would investigate it, consistent with that policy.

There is no question of trying ‘to make the geology fit’. If the geology is not suitable in any area or site we are asked to investigate, we will simply not proceed in that area.

We are not alone in this approach, with the Canadian authorities currently pursuing the same path. . . . .

MORE:

[ http://www.mkg.se/uploads/A_Wasted_Futu ... r_2013.pdf


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Report damns Sellafield firm over radioactive clean-up

On Nov 10, 2013, at 9:43 PM, Gordon Edwards wrote:

Background:

A central fact about radioactivity is that no one knows how to turn it off. Radioactive materials continue to emit atomic radiation at a rate which cannot be influenced by any of the usual factors: heat, pressure, chemical reactions, absorption, dilution, compaction -- NOTHING can be used to speed, up, slow down, or stop the process of radioactive disintegration from occurring.

This central fact means that "radioactive cleanup" is a very misleading phrase. It suggests to ordinary folks that we can somehow "get rid" of radioactive contamination -- but we cannot do so, at least not in any absolute sense. All we can do is move the contamination from one place to another. If you "decontaminate" one site, you must be contaminating another site. The contamination may be repackaged, or consolidated, or managed, or made less available to the environment of living things, but it cannot be eliminated.

Governments and their electorates have been misled by the nuclear industry into believing false notions about nuclear waste. Laws have been passed, billions of dollars spent, nuclear expansion plans approved, based on the erroneous impression that nuclear scientists know how to "clean up" and "dispose" of nuclear waste. They do not know how to do so, except in a temporary and superficial manner.

Gordon Edwards, President
Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility
www.ccnr.org

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Report damns Sellafield firm over clean-up

[ http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/po ... 30953.html ]

Security breaches and delays are rife as nuclear contractor 'puts shareholders before taxpayer'

By Mark Leftly, The Independent, November 10, 2013

http://tinyurl.com/mox9h9j

The £70 billion project to rid Sellafield, Europe's most hazardous nuclear site, of its waste legacy is more than a decade behind schedule and is managed in shareholder, not taxpayer, interests, a damning confidential report reveals.

The Commons Public Accounts Committee chair, Margaret Hodge, said yesterday that the failings at the Cumbrian plant proved how "outrageous" the decision had been to trust a private company to decontaminate the facility.

The Independent on Sunday can reveal that nine of the 11 biggest projects to make Sellafield safe, including building a storage facility for radioactive sludge, are £2bn over budget. Seven will complete late, with a combined delay of eleven and a half years. The expansion of a huge waste processor, Evaporator D, is now expected in February 2016, a year and nine months later than planned.

The evaporator, which has been likened to a "giant kettle" for reducing liquid waste, has also been found to be a prime example of poor project management, as design deficiencies were discovered too late to avoid delays and spiralling costs.

A report detailing the problems at Sellafield, produced by the accountant KPMG, runs to 292 pages and will heap pressure on the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority's (NDA) decision last month to hand a five-year extension of the contract to clean up the site to Nuclear Management Partners (NMP). The consortium, led by US engineer URS, includes the British nuclear reactor specialists Amec.

Unions wanted to see NMP stripped of the contract, and KPMG, for its part, looked into the option of bringing the clean-up back under the control of the public sector.

Buried deep in the KPMG report is a finding that the structure of the contract is "inappropriate", arguing that the "NDA is not yet an 'intelligent client'". The report added: "A consequence of contracting with the private sector is the introduction of objectives additional to NDA's own. Chief among these is a duty to protect shareholders interests and to maximise shareholder returns."

Mrs Hodge said: "That is outrageous, actually, an incredibly powerful finding. This demonstrates that NMP does not have the taxpayer's interest at the heart."

Dr David Lowry, the research consultant who obtained the report through the Freedom of Information Act, pointed out security breaches had been raised by KPMG. Since April 2012, it found there had been 11.5 "security events" per month.

MORE:

[ http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/po ... 30953.html ]