|
Britain's
Toxic
Coast
|
||
 |
||
|
||||||
| Home | Opinion
(this
page)
|
The Voice of Experience | Editorial |
A Clean Sweep for Sooty? Another
interesting revelation in that august journal, Private Eye.
This time in relation to the black art (sorry) of carbon
trading. Noting that carbon trading may be useless at
tackling climate change (merely paying someone in another country to
take the blame for your company's emissions doesn't reduce the output -
almost literallly a case of smoke and mirrors), the article (in Private
Eye, 1258) explains the role of the scheme's architect, Richard Sandor,
in pioneering the "collateral mortgage obligations" that eventually
brought the financial markets to their knees. He was also
the architect of the first pollution permit trading scheme in sulphur
emissions, in the US.
Sandors now chairs Climate Exchange plc., which controls more than 80% of the EU carbon emissions trading. According to the article, he has also been a "big mover" behind plans for a mandatory trading system in the US, from which his company would dramatically benefit. Business is also booming as the EU countries are in discussion over 30% cuts in emissions and the move to 100% auctioning of allowances in 2011. Apparently trading worth £70 billion last year, yielding a profit for the company of £11.5 million. The Eye then gives a brief explanation of why, despite the profits, none of it is taxable in this country. Yet again we see a motive for encouraging the link between CO2 emissions and any apparent global warming. Perhaps if the promoters were not making quite so many £ millions from their spiel we might be more believing? Perhaps a more pertinent question might be: who gave any company the rights to authorise pollution - whether real or virtual? Not content with the failures of the University of East Anglia, and their destruction of vital data, we note the article on P. 5 of the Sunday Times, 17th January, 2010: A warning that climate change will melt most of the Himalayan glaciers by 2035 is likely to be retracted after a series of scientific blunders by the United Nations body that issued it.
Comment:
At the "consultation"
meeting in Whitehaven on 16th January, the point was raised about the
impact any achieved reduction by the UK would have in global terms,
especially when other countries, such as India, China, and America emit
far more than us. The point of the question relating not to the
value of reducing emissions per se, but the the excessive haste of the
UK government to achieve something which, being so rushed will
exaggerate the horrendous impact of their policies on rural
communities. Sadly the idea was above the abilities of the
"consultation lead" to follow. He only understood the bit about
not immediately reducing emissions and announced that the Copenhagen
meeting (which he seemed to think were a success) required everyone to
reduce their CO2 output as soon as
possible. Surely a more sustainable result would ensue from a
better-judged approach? Even a better implementation of
micro-generation (each home having a generator to contribute to its own
power-usage) and better facilitated house-insulation would produce
dramatic reductions in grid-based demands. If all local councils
were to become involved in such schemes, there would be an obvious
reduction in the need to build contaminating and destructive reactors
on any green-field site.
EDF Energy wants Britain
to fix the market if it builds nuclear plants
British families could be forced to pay up to £227 extra on their annual energy bills to help to fund a new generation of nuclear power stations under plans proposed by the French company expected to build most of them. EDF Energy, which wants to build four reactors in Britain at a cost of about £20 billion, was accused of holding the Government to ransom last night, after an executive told The Times that none would be built unless the Government agreed to underwrite part of the cost. Speaking before a government announcement on Britain’s energy future on Monday, Humphrey Cadoux-Hudson, managing director of EDF Energy’s new nuclear business in Britain, said the nuclear programme would proceed only if the Government ensured that consumers paid more for electricity from fossil fuels, such as coal and gas, which is cheaper but produces more greenhouse gas, making nuclear more competitive. To fix the market in favour of nuclear energy he proposed a minimum price on the permits that energy companies need to buy to emit carbon dioxide. The cost of permits was too low — at about €14 per tonne — for energy companies to be encouraged to invest in nuclear rather than gas-fired power stations, which are far cheaper and quicker to build. He said that a price of €25-35 per tonne of carbon dioxide was necessary to make construction ofnuclear stations profitable. “A floor price for carbon is needed ... The waste product of fossil fuel generation needs to have a cost,” he said. His intervention threatens the Government’s plan to boost the proportion of electricity generated from nuclear power, which is considered critical to Britain’s energy security as supplies of North Sea gas run out, and to meet the Government’s goal of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 80 per cent by 2050. The Government has pointedly refused any kind of subsidy for new nuclear power stations and is relying on private industry to finance the programme. But Matthew Sinclair, research director at the TaxPayers’ Alliance, strongly rejected the proposals. He said: “There is no way that the Government should even think of acceding to EDF Energy’s demands for a floor price on carbon.” Mr Sinclair claimed that the cost to British consumers would be about £4.2 billion to £5.9 billion per year, or £162 to £227 per household, and that it would hit poor and vulnerable households hardest. Ben Ayliffe, a campaigner for Greenpeace, accused EDF of holding the Government to ransom over the new build programme. “They have got them by the short and curlies ... Even with the full resources of the French Government behind them, it seems they cannot make the economics of new nuclear stack up.” With supplies of North Sea gas rapidly running out, on Monday the Government will disclose an approved list of sites for new nuclear plants, each of which would churn out enough electricity to power a city the size of Manchester for 60 years. By 2015 it hopes that at least eight will be under construction, with the first, at Hinkley Point, Somerset, due to enter service in 2017. Ed Miliband, the Energy Secretary, will offer a formal justification for the new plants to Parliament. He will also discuss new clean coal plants, wind parks and other key energy projects that the Government wants to fast-track through the planning system, using powers created last month. This national nuclear policy statement comes amid mounting pessimism that a UN climate conference, in Copenhagen next month, will succeed in establishing a high international price for carbon dioxide emissions. This would drive greater investment in low carbon of energy, including nuclear and renewables such as wind and solar power. A spokesman for the Department of Energy and Climate Change said that the Government had “no current plans” to introduce a floor price for carbon and said “all our efforts are towards an ambitious deal at Copenhagen”. Source: http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/related_reports/the_future_of_energy/article6907099.ece The Guardian's Potted History
Today's news that body parts were taken from dead workers at the Sellafield nuclear facility is grisly, but not entirely unexpected when considered within the history of what is possibly Britain's longest-running public relations disaster. Over its half-century of nuclear work, the Sellafield complex, by the village of Seascale on the west Cumbria coast, has attracted the ire of everyone from environmentalists to governments of every political hue in Ireland and Scandinavia. Sellafield's long lifespan has been due to two factors: firstly, the economic importance of the thousands of jobs it generates, and secondly the sheer complexity and expense of decommissioning the nuclear waste-ridden facility. The one and a half square mile site's dubious public reputation began almost immediately, when it was still known as Windscale. A former second world war munitions factory, it became Britain's first nuclear complex in the late 1940s, and its Calder Hall reactors began generating electricity in 1956. However, a major fire broke out in a reactor chimney a year later, spreading radioactivity across the surrounding countryside in what is generally thought to have been the world's worst nuclear accident before that at Three Mile Island in the US in 1979. This, more than anything, made Windscale a symbol of hate for environmentalists and opponents of nuclear energy, something that barely changed even when British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL) decided to try and banish the bad memories by changing the plant's name to Sellafield in 1981. The reactor involved in the fire had to be shut down and sealed, but Windscale continued to generate power using its other Magnox reactors and a later, more advanced, gas-cooled reactor housed in the site's distinctive spherical "golfball" building. From the 1960s, Windscale also began reprocessing nuclear fuel, an operation later expanded to take in spent fuel from other countries. It was this activity that enraged Ireland and Scandinavian nations including Norway and Denmark, which bitterly oppose the practice of discharging water contaminated with radioactive waste substances such as Technetium-99 into the Irish sea. The Irish government took its complaints to the UN in 2001, saying pollution from the site broke the UN convention on the law of the sea. In 2003, UK government tests also found traces of Technetium-99 in salmon bred in farms near the plant. Electricity production finished in 2003 when the last of the elderly Calder Hall reactors were closed after almost 50 years of generation. However, bad publicity has dogged the waste reprocessing work, including a lengthy saga in 2002 when containers of spent fuel were sent back to Japan only to be rejected and returned to Sellafield. In April 2005, Sellafield's Thorp reprocessing facility had to be shut down after acid containing 20 tonnes of uranium and 160kg of plutonium spilled from a broken pipe. The accident caused no injuries and no radioactive material escaped, but a Health and Safety Executive report highlighted serious failings, including staff ignoring alarms. Just three months earlier, the UK Atomic Energy Authority had announced that nearly 27kg of plutonium - enough for seven nuclear weapons - was "unaccounted for", although it stressed this appeared merely to be an auditing error. These days, however, opposition to Sellafield is largely academic because the complex is being gradually shut down, meaning around three-quarters of its 10,000-strong workforce will lose their jobs by 2011. While BNFL still manages Sellafield, the complex has been owned by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, which is overseeing the closure process, since 2005. But there is still plenty of time for more PR trouble ahead- with some waste remaining dangerous for 250,000 years, the authority warns that the closure process could take up to a century. Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/apr/18/energy.nuclearindustry Israel's threat of
military action against Iran's alleged nuclear weapons programme is not
a bluff, the country's deputy foreign minister has told Sky News.
E.ON UK, RWE npower nuclear joint
venture fully established
On 5/11/09, RWE npower and E.ON UK announced further details of their nuclear joint venture, which is to be called Horizon Nuclear Power. The company will begin operation from 16 November working from new headquarters near Gloucester. The 50:50 joint venture was created in January and aims to develop around 6,000MW of new nuclear capacity in the UK - enough to power a city the size of Greater London - by 2025. The first reactor is expected to come online around 2020. Earlier this year the company secured development land at Wylfa on Anglesey and Oldbury-on-Severn in South Gloucestershire. Its programme of new nuclear power stations could involve more than £15bn in investment and create around 11,000 jobs, including around 800 permanent jobs at each site and up to 10,000 during construction. Chief Operating Officer Alan Raymant said: "Nuclear energy will form a key part of Britain's low carbon future and Horizon Nuclear Power will play a key role in delivering new nuclear stations, helping achieve the UK's stretching environmental targets and stabilise energy prices." The company is also progressing its competitive tender process with Areva and Westinghouse for the selection of a reactor technology. "Choosing our reactor supplier is a significant milestone and the technical and commercial evaluation of our options is well underway," said Alan. "A team of nuclear experts from across RWE and E.ON has been put in place to support this process, with the aim of selecting a preferred supplier for exclusive negotiation early in the new year." The company will also look to establish local offices close to its development sites at Wylfa and Oldbury. "We've met a lot of local people and groups around our sites at Oldbury and Wylfa and we'll maintain an open, no-surprises approach," said Alan. "Technical investigations are progressing well and we'll shortly be engaging further with local organisations and the public on the detailed studies required to prepare consent applications. "The imminent publication of the Government's Nuclear National Policy Statement is also a key step and we look forward to playing our part in the consultation process that follows. It's vital that the Government sticks to the timeline for establishing the regulatory and consenting framework for new nuclear if we are to deliver what the country needs in terms of reliable, low carbon electricity." Horizon Nuclear Power will have an initial focus on consenting and constructing new nuclear power stations which will have a 60 year lifetime. E.ON and RWE have interests in 23 nuclear reactors in Germany and Sweden, including two jointly owned reactors at Gundremmingen and one at Lingen. (Text supplied by RWE) Source: http://www.yournuclearnews.com/e.on+uk,+rwe+npower+nuclear+joint+venture+fully+established_41404.html Interestingly, the joint company is already in the throes of determining the reactor supplier: Westinghouse or Areva. Strange, when they don't even have planning permission and the consultation period is still running! Source: http://www.contractjournal.com/Articles/2009/11/05/73317/rwe-eon-and-npower-nuclear-jv-named-horizon-nuclear.html Electricity
prices in France set to double in ten years: as of
2010, EDF's rivals could buy electricity from the former monopoly's
nuclear power plants at about 34 euros ($50.90) per megawatt hour, a
price that would gradually increase to 55-60 euros until 2020. EDF still owns all of
France's 58 nuclear reactor, which provide an 80 percent share in
overall electricity consumption. Competitors such as
Poweo (ALPWO.PA) or GDF Suez (GSZ.PA) are struggling to attract clients
because they do not have access to baseload electricity output.
Sellafield
land sale agreed The government reform plan includes ending state-set electricity tariffs for industries by 2015 and allowing rival power suppliers to buy nuclear-generated nuclear power at production cost. A UFE spokeswoman said it was not part of the body's remit to decide on a price level but up to the [French] government. "We are discussing a general industrial framework but it is absolutely not up to us to decide on a price level," she said. French households and businesses benefit from low regulated prices, making it hard for newcomers to beat EDF's state-fixed tariffs. EDF is the world's largest single nuclear producer. Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/rbssIndustryMaterialsUtilitiesNews/idUSLM57235420091022 Ministers refuse to
attend debate on price of nuclear power
The government has refused an invitation to attend a public debate on the cost of new nuclear power today, which will be attended by industry figures, academics and many other interested parties. Paul Dorfman, a senior research associate at Warwick University and the event's organiser, said it showed ministers were scared about the cost to consumers and taxpayers of nuclear power. Companies at the forefront of plans to build new reactors, such as EDF and Centrica, have said they will attend the meeting at Portcullis House, next to the Houses of Parliament. But the Office for Nuclear Development (OND) – an arm of the Department of Energy and Climate Change – said: "On this occasion ministers and officials have decided not to attend." Dorfman said the OND had offered to talk through the issues but insisted this happened in private. "The government do not want to be challenged in public. I think it is reasonable to assume that they are deeply concerned about their position and know reactors cannot be built at a competitive cost without public subsidies." Based on the industry's track record, there is good reason to be sceptical about the economics of nuclear power, even before the debacle in Finland. The last reactor constructed in Britain was Sizewell B in Suffolk. It was originally budgeted to cost about £1.9bn but eventually came in at about £3bn. The cash was all provided by the public sector – half of it being taken from the nuclear levy that was created to help cover decommissioning and waste disposal costs. There have also been financial – and technical problems – with other plants such as the mixed oxide (Mox) and Thorp fuel reprocessing facilities at Sellafield, the UK's largest atomic complex. Mox was meant to cost £265m but ended up costing £490m within three years. It produced only 5.2 tonnes of reprocessed fuel between 2001 and 2007, despite an promised annual output of 120 tonnes. The government has also promised nuclear developers that taxpayers will meet any of their cost overruns from decommissioning the new reactors and storing the waste. Officials are in charge of setting a fixed price for the waste and experts are setting it deliberately high to factor in any cost overrun. But Gordon MacKerron, who up to 2007 was chairman of the Committee on Radioactive Waste Management, set up by the government to work out how to deal with the UK's nuclear waste, admits that it will be decades before we know for sure what the bill is and whether the taxpayer will have to pay more. Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/oct/19/cost-nuclear-power-debate-government More on the Infallible Nuclear Industry
In a rare joint statement, nuclear safety bodies in France, Britain and Finland on Monday ordered France's Areva (CEPFi.PA) and EDF (EDF.PA) to modify the safety features on its European Pressurised Reactors (EPR) due to insufficient independence between the day-to-day systems and the emergency systems. Opponents to nuclear power latched on to the news, with France's opposition socialist party calling for a parliamentary inquiry. CAP21, a political party founded by Corrine Lepage, a former environment minister, also said more investment should be made in renewable energy rather than nuclear. French President Nicolas Sarkozy has championed nuclear power, both at home and abroad, where he hopes French companies will benefit from a global drive to find ways of generating electricity that produce less CO2 emissions and are independent of oil price fluctuations. The design problems come as a blow to Areva, which has staked its export growth on the EPR and is hoping that it will beat out American rival Westinghouse, owned by Japan's Toshiba (6502.T), to become the standard-bearer for a new generation of nuclear plants. Pierre Boucheny head of French research at financial service company Kepler capital markets told Reuters Areva's financial visibility was obscured by unexpected hitches and delays in the construction of the firm's first EPR in Finland. "This problem (over safety) might cause a delay of a few months, maybe more, but it's hard to say what it will cost," he said. Non-voting shares in Areva closed 3.9 percent lower at 8.75 euros. Areva said on Monday it was in talks to modify the design of the EPR plants before the end of the year and insisted the safety of the EPR plants was not in question. EDF, which operates all of France's 19 nuclear power plants, said on Tuesday it had been asked to conduct a closer study of secondary systems at its Flamanville EPR reactor and would respond by year-end. Areva has started building two EPRs in China's Guangdong province and in January Sarkozy gave approval for the construction of a second EPR plant in France. Areva has also joined forces with Total (TOTF.PA) and GDF Suez (GSZ.PA) in a consortium to bid build at least four nuclear power reactors in the United Arab Emirates Britain also is mulling whether to relaunch its nuclear energy programme with modern plants and the Italian government has signalled that it intends to build four new nuclear plants. Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/companyNews/idUSL358767420091103?pageNumber=1&virtualBrandChannel=11604 28 October 2009 The
Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) is pleased to announce that
today, following a period of market engagement and negotiation with
interested parties, it has sold an area of land comprising 190 ha (470
acres) lying to the north of the existing site at Sellafield in Cumbria
for a value of at least £70 million. The winning consortium
comprises Iberdrola S.A, GdF Suez S.A and Scottish and Southern Energy
plc.
The sale will result in an upfront payment of £19.5 million for the NDA, followed by a further payment of at least £50.5 million in the next six years. The sale represents further continuation of the NDA's programme of asset disposals, all raising funds which the NDA can put towards its core mission of decommissioning the UK 's fleet of existing nuclear power stations. The consortium will now progress with detailed site investigations to determine the exact location for its proposed nuclear development and then apply for the necessary planning and licensing permissions. Land surplus to requirements will be returned to the NDA. John Clarke, NDA Commercial Director said: "The sale of this land is a significant milestone in our asset disposal programme and follows on from the successful sale of land at three of our sites earlier this year. The £450 million generated from these sales will be utilised to support the NDA's clean-up mission and is good news for the UK taxpayer." [ . . . and probably increase the size of bonuses paid to NDA staff! Source http://www.cnplus.co.uk/news/nda-sells-sellafield-land-for-nuclear-development.] and from the Whitehaven News of the same date: New lifeline for Mox plantSellafield's troubled Mox plant (SMP)
has been given a lifeline after picking up its performance.
The plant's future has been hanging in the balance for months but has been given a vote of confidence by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority after a review of itis operations and viability. Sellafield staff were told the news today (Tuesday) and it comes as a big boost not only to the site as a whole but the 800 workers who operate SMP, which was designed to manufacture nuclear reactor fuel by mixing plutonium and uranium but has been plagued by so many technical problems that it has still not been fully commissioned. An NDA spokesman said: "The plant first went into production in 2002 and to date has failed to meet its throughput targets, but its performance has improved in the last few months. "The best course of action at this stage is the continued operation of SMP and to complete the current campaign of fuel manufacture while seeking to improve operational performance further. "International Nuclear Services, our commercial subsidiary, will continue to explore new commercial arrangements that would make the continuing operation of the plant economically acceptable to the NDA in the longer term." |
|||||||||||
 In the face of
growing energy-related environmental problems, the nuclear power
industry and government officials promote it as a clean source of
energy. This proposition is based on the myth of nuclear power’s
safety as:
• Safe;
• Sustainable; • A vital contributor to the national energy supply; • Climate-friendly. Nothing could be further from the truth. Currently, the primary causes of climate change consist of the emissions of major “greenhouse” gases, such as carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), and nitrous oxide (N2O), through human activities. Emissions of other greenhouse gases, such as hydrofluorocarbons, also contribute to global warming. The prime villain in the climate change problem remains carbon dioxide, a constant by-product of nuclear power from ground extraction to manufactured reactor fuel. Throughout the process that produces nuclear power, carbon dioxide is emitted at every stage of the seven phases of the nuclear fuel cycle. In comparison to renewable energy sources, power generated from nuclear reactors releases four to five times more CO2 per unit of energy produced, when taking into account the entire nuclear fuel cycle. Among conventional power generation methods, nuclear power produces more CO2 than oil-fired power plants (but less than gas-fired power plants). Reducing the rate of climate change can be accomplished by conserving electricity and opting to purchase electricity from renewable sources. Ultimately, citizens should support state and federal legislation to expand renewable energy sources. Source: http://www.helencaldicott.com/childrenshealth_proc.pdf By Bill Dougherty - a senior scientist at the Stockholm Environmental Institute. He is a professional engineer with broad experience in engineering analysis and regional planning. He has worked on projects in Morocco, Sudan, Pakistan, Thailand, and South Africa. His work in the United States has focused on power plant emissions and impacts, emission control technologies and costs, greenhouse gas emissions, fuel cycles, and nuclear power plant aging. “The only viable solution to the
manifold problems of nuclear waste storage and transportation is to
stop generating the waste.”
The BBC's "You and Yours" lunchtime programme on 13th October covered quite a range of opinions on the future of energy in the UK. Only the Lib Dems seemed able to say that nuclear is not clean and green, and is in fact, extremely expensive. A statement from the SNP indicated that Scotland would not be taking part in any nuclear expansion, pointing out that the production of energy from renewables had risen by 10%, whilst the production from nuclear plants had fallen by 25%. A range of comments revealed that several contributors had actually fallen for the industry hype, and said that nuclear was low carbon and that the waste could - eventually - be managed when science had come up with the method. Happily, the nuclear lobby did not win the day, as another contributor illustrated that the actual production of the nuclear fuel required lots of carbon-using resources. http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00n4kcw/You_and_Yours_13_10_2009/ Some Comments from the Experts Source: http://www.npec-web.org/essays/200908NEI-MycleViewpointFrance.pdf |
|||||||||||
| In
the aftermath of the 1973 oil
shock, France launched its first large
series of nuclear reactors as a reaction to energy shortages.
Energy
conservation was to help in the short term, but nuclear power was
supposed to bring the country independence from oil in the longer run. The strategy was dubious from the start, because the power sector was responsible for less than 12%of the total oil consumed in France in 1973. The key oil problem was not in electric generation but in transport and inefficient buildings, and those uses were neglected. The result three decades later is stunning. French per capita consumption of oil is higher than in non-nuclear Italy, nuclear phase-outGermany or the EU on average – hardly proof of an enviable level of oil independence. France’s nearly exclusive focus on (nuclear) energy supply has meanwhile eroded access to affordable energyservices. Even before the recession, the National Housing Agency (ANAH) found that ‘three million French are cold in winter.’ With energy poverty now widespread, requests for social assistance to pay energy bills is rising 15%per year. Almost one household in four cannot pay its power, gas, water or phone bills. 
|
 Electric space heating was heavily promoted and now equips three-quarters of new housing, in particular multi-family homes. Electric heat is not just inefficient end-to-end, it is very costly for the user and creates severe distortion of the power system, with daily peak loads in the winter three times those of summer loads. This in turn leads to increasing use of old oil and coal-fired power plants and to significant power imports. The Times is reporting massive power flows from Britain to France, mainly because about a third of French nuclear capacity is offline for maintenance, refueling, or insufficient cooling water. Thermal power plants account for over half of France’s freshwater withdrawals or about one-tenth of precipitation. Cheap power was to make French industry competitive; however, as well as reaching a record trade deficit of EUR58 billion, France has even become a net importer of German coal-based power. The power-trade trend thus not only further degrades the French trade imbalance but also increases the carbon content of the kWh consumed in France, wherever it's produced. Per capita greenhouse gas emissions in France, about 9t CO2-equivalent in 2006, are lower than in other European countries, but not by much: Italy, Spain and the whole EU are around 10, the UK 11 and Germany 12. |
||||||||||
Nuclear waste is an enormously difficult political problem which, to date, no country has solved. It is, together with the financial inviability, the Achilles heel of the nuclear industry. Could these problems bring down France's uniquely successful nuclear program? France's politicians and technocrats are in no doubt: if France is unable to solve this issue, says one expert, then "I do not see how we can continue our nuclear program." The Sunday Times, 11th October, 2009, has an interesting and thought-provoking article relating to global warming. We have long pondered over whether the climate change is being over-hyped (possibly by those with a vested interest in taking our money) as we are aware from archaeology that dinosaurs once roamed our lands, and that an ice-sheet several kilometers deep covered a lot of what is now the UK. We have a strong belief that nature will deal with those who ignore her power. Amongst the suggestions from American scientists is the premise that the modern clean air moves have removed considerable amounts of particulates from the atmosphere, thus allowing more sunlight through. Thus, the planet is returning to its natural state because there is less pollution. As a result, the article suggests, the seas are warming up, and we all know that warming things causes them to expand. Thus the sea levels rise. CO2, far from being a poison benefits plants, and the enhanced growth of plants subjected to a CO2 enriched environment demonstrates that they can deal with the change. |
|||||||||||
|
News
& Star 21/8/09
LWatson@cngroup.co.uk
|
|||||||||||
A Government report this week revealed what, on the face of it, sounded like a catalogue of incidents at nuclear installations across the country – 81 coolant leaks and 80 fires. Sellafield say they have a grip on the dangers and every incident is a lesson to be learned. Opponents argue the real effect may not be known until it is too late. According to the Department for Energy and Climate Change, the first leak at Sellafield was in July 2004 and a further problem was reported 12 months later. The next leak was in 2006 when problems were reported with the cooling tower and storage pond, and the final one, in January 2007, was at the Waste Vitrification Plant. Sellafield Limited say they were all dealt with in a professional manner and no workers were exposed to harm. But they declined to reveal further details about the incidents and the company is to appear at Carlisle Crown Court tomorrow over health and safety breaches after admitting that two contractors were exposed to radioactive contamination in July 2007. The two received an internal dose of radiation during the contamination of an area of concrete floor. Nigel Lawrence, prosecuting for the Health and Safety Executive, said the seriousness of the incident was borne “out of the extent” of the contamination. Fires also caused two problems at Sellafield in 2001, and two Magnox fuel decanning fires were reported in 2004 at the Fuel Handling Plant. The final fire was on the power plant turbine. Loose waste material also combusted at Drigg Low Level Waste Repository in west Cumbria in October 2005, according to the government figures. Nuclear critics say the problems are a sign of the dangers of the nuclear plants and that the unpredictably of the subject coupled with human error means that we are never very far from a disaster. Martin
Forwood from Cumbrians
Opposed to a Radioactive Environment (CORE) said that the real effects
of the leaks and fires may not be known until it is too late.
CORE was first formed in 1980 and today has hundreds of supporters.
They originally campaigned against reprocessing of nuclear fuel at
Sellafield but have expanded their arguments and are now opposed
nuclear energy entirely. He told the News & Star:
“There has to be more focus on renewables, energy efficiency
and
conservation. The government pays lip service to renewable
energy
– wind power is not the
only option. Tide and wave power are serious alternatives.
Nuclear
power has always taken the majority of resources and
development
money.
Renewables in the UK are way behind.”
|
Mr Forwood said the unpredictability of what happens when there are leaks and fires at nuclear power plants was a serious problem.“A lot of the accidents come from human error and there are no safety measure you can put in place to combat this,” he said. “In 1999 we became concerned because there were a string of accidents one after another at Sellafield. We appealed to the nuclear installations inspector to carry out an inspection and they did, listing a number of issues. Perhaps it is time that they had another investigation.” Mr Forwood added that some of the campaigners’ concerns are mirrored by the public. “The majority of calls CORE get are from people coming to live in Cumbria or for a holiday with their kids, asking us if it is safe,” he said. “We tell them it is safe but the levels of radioactivity along some parts of the coast are high. The last thing we want to do is put people off coming to west Cumbria. The big problem with the argument against nuclear power is influence on jobs. It is difficult to know how all these jobs would be taken up by another employer. But there is so much work to be done and decommissioning would take hundreds of years of work.” A spokesman from Sellafield Limited said that the organisation operated a “learn from experience” system where all incidents are investigated and any lessons that can be learned from these are communicated through the workforce. He added that these are also used to review practices and can lead to changes. The spokesman added: “Sellafield Limited reports incidents, however minor, to the authorities and the public and this is a sign of a rigorous and transparent safety regime. The incidents referred to were dealt with in a highly professional manner and although some of the incidents caused limited damage to non essential plant equipment, they did not result in injury to personnel. Sellafield’s new parent body, NMP, has brought world class experience and expertise in conduct of operations and are driving disciplined professionalism throughout the workforce.” Despite the risks nuclear power still remains high on the government agenda and ministers have given the go-ahead for new nuclear plant and reactors expected to be built in Copeland, along with new build at Sellafield. Each new reactor built would create up to 10,000 jobs – 9,000 of them in construction and the rest operational. Critics say there are other ways to secure Britain’s energy needs and have pointed to past problems at Sellafield as proof it is not the solution. But with the current opposition to windfarms and other renewable energy sources, the debate is far from over. |
||||||||||
|
What the Other Papers Think
|
| The
potential threat of theft of nuclear material is a scenario which may
seem rather far-fetched, but is it? In our objection to the
proposed developments we pointed out that, despite the presence of a
no-fly zone over Sellafield, a light aircraft circled the area for over
15 minutes in 2008, before RAF fighters arrived on the scene to escort
the plane away. A happy ending, but it could have been so
different . . . Nuclear attack fears as
terrorist raids on
atomic bases revealed
- Dean Nelson in New Delhi The
Taliban and
al-Qa'ida have attacked Pakistan's nuclear weapons bases at least three
times in the last two years, it was claimed yesterday. The
allegations, by a leading British expert on Pakistan's nuclear arsenal,
added to fears that terrorists could acquire a nuclear device or bomb
an atomic facility.
Professor Shaun Gregory, director of the Pakistan Security Research Unit at Bradford University, gave details of three attacks since November 2007 and raised the spectre of more. He said militants had struck a nuclear storage facility at Sarghoda on November 1st, 2007; launched a suicide bomb assault on a nuclear airbase at Kamra on December 10th, 2007; and set off explosions at the entrances to Wah cantonment, one of Pakistan's main nuclear assembly plants, in August 2008. The attacks were carried out despite an extensive security cordon and millions of dollars in American technical aid to prevent militant infiltration. Pakistan's nuclear weapons establishments are protected by heavily armed soldiers, while inside, sophisticated sensors guard against intruders. But despite this system, Prof Gregory said the facilities remained vulnerable because they were in areas where "Taliban and al-Qa'ida are more than capable of launching terrorist attacks". The risk of terrorists acquiring nuclear weapons was "genuine", he said. Source: http://www.independent.ie/world-news/middle-east/nuclear-attack-fears-as-terrorist-raids-on-atomic-bases-revealed-1857041.html (© Daily Telegraph, London) Despite
government promises
that there will be no levies to provide funding for new nuclear sites,
the industry has a growing sense that EdF, E.ON and RWE npower, the
backers of new nuclear plants, may find that construction is uneconomic
without them. There is also a strengthening feeling that
national energy security ought to take a priority over the targets set
by the European government that say UK emissions must be reduced by 80%
from 1990 levels by 2050.
The problem lies in the European Union's decree that Britain's dirtiest power stations – the old-style coal and oil generation plants – must be shut down not at a certain date, but after a certain number of hours. These plants, which are used as back-up generators for times of peak demand, are expected to shut in about 2015. Following in the fashion set by Enron may be another ploy to be used (if it isn't already), by limiting the amount of electricity made available by the six electricity and gas suppliers. Indeed, the combined efforts of the already-acutely-vulnerable nuclear industry and the electricity suppliers has scared the UK government into ill-considered moves. We note elsewhere that the profits to be made from the supply of electricity in this country are actually to the benefit of foreign countries, namely Germany and France. Daily
Telegraph 13/8/09
German utility giant RWE saw global pre-tax profits rise by 20% to €3.38bn (£2.91bn) despite revenues down 1% to €24.4bn for the six months to the end of June. This success is partly due to locking-in power tariffs before the recession, which caused wholesale gas and power prices to slump. Its focus on reducing costs in the UK comes as its npower division put in a "weak performance due to the above-average price and cost pressure", especially those related to new Government green initiatives and rising bad debt. The UK cost-cutting programme may result in reduced headcount through unfilled vacancies, although redundancies were not ruled out. "Like all big companies, we are looking at everything from travel costs to mobile phone use," a spokesman for RWE npower said. "There is no big redundancy programme planned." RWE npower has a 15% share of the UK market, where it has been one of the last electricity providers to reduce tariffs for consumers and businesses, despite falling wholesale prices. Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/utilities/6023859/RWE-cuts-UK-costs-as-green-initiatives-bite.html Of course, one of the main things being touted as an essential which will be met by nuclear new-build is "energy security". Yet we do seem to have a history of disagreement with both the countries which have been invited to take over large swathes of the UK coast. Who knows how long it might be before a similar breakdown in amicable relations occurs? |
| On the 19th April, 2009,
the Guardian on Sunday newspaper, ran
an
article by Robin McKie, science editor, about Sellafield. Sellafield:
the most hazardous place in Europe
Last week the government announced plans for a new generation of nuclear plants. But Britain is still dealing with the legacy of its first atomic installation at Sellafield - a toxic waste dump in one of the most contaminated buildings in Europe. As a multi-billion-pound clean-up is planned, can we avoid making the same mistakes again? The disused plutonium reactors at Sellafield are a 'slow-motion Chernobyl', according to Greenpeace campaigners against nuclear energy. Building B30 is a large, stained, concrete edifice that stands at the centre of Sellafield, Britain's sprawling nuclear processing plant in Cumbria. Surrounded by a three-metre-high fence that is topped with razor wire, encased in scaffolding and riddled with a maze of sagging pipes and cabling, it would never be a contender to win an architectural prize. Yet B30 has a powerful claim to fame, albeit a disturbing one. "It is the most hazardous industrial building in western Europe," according to George Beveridge, Sellafield's deputy managing director. Nor is it hard to understand why the building possesses such a fearsome reputation. Piles of old nuclear reactor parts and decaying fuel rods, much of them of unknown provenance and age, line the murky, radioactive waters of the cooling pond in the centre of B30. Down there, pieces of contaminated metal have dissolved into sludge that emits heavy and potentially lethal doses of radiation. It is an unsettling place, though B30 is certainly not unique. There is Building B38 next door, for example. "That's the second most hazardous industrial building in Europe," said Beveridge. Here highly radioactive cladding from reactor fuel rods is stored, also under water. And again, engineers have only a vague idea what else has been dumped in its cooling pond and left to disintegrate for the past few decades. During the miners' strike of 1972, the nation's nuclear plants were run at full stretch in order to supply electricity to a beleaguered nation. As a result, it proved impossible to process all the waste that was being generated. Cladding and fuel were simply thrown into B38's cooling ponds and left to disintegrate. But the building, like so many other elderly edifices at Sellafield, is crumbling and engineers now face the headache of dealing with its lethal contents. This, then, is the dark heart of Sellafield, a place where engineers and scientists are only now confronting the legacy of Britain's postwar atomic aspirations and the toxic wasteland that has been created on the Cumbrian coast. Engineers estimate that it could cost the nation up to £50bn to clean this up over the next 100 years. [Spending on Sellafield's decommissioning is around £1.5 billion per year.] The figure is, by far, the largest part of the £73bn that has been committed to cleaning up Britain's nuclear-polluted past. It is also an acute embarrassment to the government, which is now anxiously promoting nuclear power as the solution to Britain's energy problems. Last week ministers revealed a list of 11 sites for new nuclear plants around Britain. Atomic power will be the nation's salvation as it battles global warming and seeks to cut its carbon emissions, they insisted. But the condition of edifices such as B30 and B38 - and all the other "legacy" structures built at Sellafield decades ago - suggest Britain might end up paying a heavy price for this new commitment to nuclear energy. After all, if it is going to cost that much to decommission early reactors, green groups and opponents of nuclear energy are asking, what might we end up paying for a second clean-up if we go ahead with new nuclear plants? For its part, the nuclear industry is adamant. New reactors will produce little waste and pose few threats to the environment, say UK nuclear chiefs who point to the example of France where almost 80% of electricity is generated by atomic fission and waste is safely reprocessed. Atomic energy today is safe and Sellafield's problems are merely a historic accident - the result of Britain's desperation to be a leading postwar power, they say. But it will be a tricky job convincing the public that modern nuclear plants are the answer to Britain's energy worries, given that there are buildings in Sellafield filled with "appalling radioactive crap", as one senior nuclear physicist put it, and which will cost tens of billions of pounds to clean up. "It is going to be a very difficult business," admitted Dr Paul Howarth, executive director of Dalton Nuclear Institute at Manchester University. "The taxpayer now has to pay around £1.5bn a year to clean up Sellafield's waste problems and will have to maintain that investment for years to come. "That is a very large financial commitment. Nevertheless it would be wrong to dismiss nuclear energy out of hand. Modern reactors are indeed very different creations compared to the first reactors that were built at Sellafield in the 1940s and 1950s. New ones produce relatively little waste, will be easy to decommission and are intrinsically clean and safe. Convincing the public of these points will not be easy, however." A former second world war ordnance factory, Sellafield was chosen to be the site for Britain's first atomic reactors - known as Pile 1 and Pile 2. These were not built to generate electricity, but to produce plutonium for the nation's independent nuclear deterrent. Construction was carried out at breakneck speed as political leaders pressed scientists to complete the project quickly. As a result of these efforts, Britain was able to explode its own atomic bombs by 1952. The UK became a nuclear power and won itself a permanent seat on the UN security council, thanks to its nuclear engineers and scientists. But success came at an appalling price. Those scientists had no time to think about the waste produced by their atomic bomb programme, a point starkly demonstrated by another Sellafield legacy building, B41. It still stores the aluminium cladding for the uranium fuel rods that were burnt inside Piles 1 and 2. That aluminium posed serious disposal problems when it was removed, in a highly radioactive state, from the two reactors as their fuel was decommissioned and their plutonium extracted. So scientists hit on what seemed to be an ingenious solution: they would dump it in a silo. "If you drive across the plains of North America, you see these isolated grain silos where farmers store their grain," says Beveridge. "And that, essentially, is what B41 is - a grain silo." Nuclear waste was tipped in at the top of B41 once it was erected and then allowed to fall to the bottom. Later, when it was realised that pieces of aluminium and magnesium among this waste could catch fire and cause widespread contamination, inert argon gas had to be pumped in to smother potential blazes. And so, for the past 60 years, building B41 has remained in this state, its highly radioactive contents mingling and reacting with each other. Now engineers have been told to clear it up. They do, fortunately, have a plan. In a few years, vast metal-cutting machines will be brought into Sellafield and used to slice into the sides of the B41 silo before mechanical grabs pull out and sort through its contents. Then this radioactive debris will be mixed with liquid glass and allowed to solidify, a process known as vitrification, before it is kept for subsequent storage in underground vaults. Isolating this material will be immensely difficult, however: B41 will have to be covered and sealed to ensure no leakage of radioactive material. At the same time, the giant cutting machines employed to slice open the silo will have to negotiate the treacherous, tight concourses that separate Sellafield's different buildings. These are lined with cabling, ducts and, most worrying of all, elevated pipes, called pipe-bridges, that carry radioactive liquid waste around the site. Damaging or opening up one of these could have disastrous consequences. Hence the care taken by engineers as they prepare their plans for B41 while their colleagues continue their work at the silo's sister plant, B29, where decommissioning work has already begun. In effect, B29 is simply a huge covered cooling pond that once stretched between the heat stacks of Piles 1 and 2. Fuel rods were removed from these two reactors, moved into the cooling pond of B29 and split open. Most of this material was removed for reprocessing but several tonnes of waste and old fuel still lies below the pond's thick milky waters and it is the task of Steve Topping, leader of the building's decommissioning team, to ensure that this is extracted and safely stored. Calm, with greying hair, Topping has a reassuringly confident air about his work despite the fact he has to deal with tonnes of nuclear waste and old oxide fuel whose exact composition and location is unknown. "The trouble is there is no one left at Sellafield to tell us where things were put down there. The stuff in the pond has been down there for 50 years," says Topping. Today B29 is showing its age and looks more like a dirty old dock than a pool with its crumbling grey concrete, grimy brickwork and old ducts and sections of corroding pipes. The water is filled with green algae and has the clarity of Milk of Magnesia, which defies all efforts to see what lies beneath. To clean it up, robot machines will soon begin to split open the submerged skips in which old waste and fuel from Piles 1 and 2 are stored. The radioactive sludge at the bottom of the pool will then be pumped into a new tank that is now under construction beside B29. Then the internal linings of its walls will be scraped clean of radioactivity before the edifice is taken down, concrete section by concrete section. At the same time, the most dangerous waste will be vitrified ready for disposal. The whole process will take at least 10 years to complete - and that is just for a single building. On top of the dismantling of B29 and B41, in which the waste from Britain's atom bomb programme is stored, there are the headaches that will be involved when dealing with the contents of B30 and B38. These hold the leftovers from the nation's first civil reactor programme, a series of reactors known as Magnox plants. Eleven of these were built and two are still in operation. Piles of the waste they have generated is to be found around Sellafield awaiting the attention of engineers like Topping, who has spent his working life at the site. "Sometimes I think this is the best job in the world," he said. "There are real skills needed to dismantle buildings like these. Every action has to be carefully planned. I love being among it all. On other days, though, it is really frustrating work. Everything has to be done in such a slow, safe and controlled manner." The key problem for Sellafield is that so much of its highly radioactive waste has been stored in water. This was done to cool fuel rods and cladding as they emerged from reactors heated to hundreds of degrees celsius. But once in water, they disintegrated and immediately posed a hazard in case a pond wall became breached, and that is why Sellafield is now undergoing its massively expensive clean-up. Those pond walls are getting old and their contents - forgotten by politicians for half a century - must be turned into solid waste that can be contained safely and buried once Britain has finally decided on the location of a deep underground repository. "We are delivering the largest environmental restoration programme in Europe and making safe and disposing of some of the most hazardous material anywhere in the world, much of which originates from early nuclear research and military projects," says Richard Waite, acting chief executive of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority. "At the same time we are providing essential services to enable current nuclear sites to 'keep the lights on'." Nuclear opponents have less complimentary views about what goes on at Sellafield, of course. The place is "a slow-motion Chernobyl", according to campaigners from Greenpeace, a group which has a reputation for never missing out on the catchy phrase. Nevertheless, Greenpeace has a point. Many of Sellafield's buildings are, essentially, no more than containers of highly radioactive scrap whose disposal is set to devour tens of billions of pounds of taxpayers' money. The site has become the biggest, and mostly easily waved, stick in the armoury of the green movement. As one senior employee admitted: "If you want to object to anything nuclear, you just have to point to Sellafield." In fact, Sellafield is a classic illustration of the failure of British industry. We were pioneers of nuclear power but in our desire to build our own atomic weapons, failed abysmally when it came to developing and managing our own civil reactors and reprocessing plants. As a result, we have been left with a multibillion-pound clean-up bill and the prospect of buying either American or French reactors for our next generation nuclear plants. The lesson of Sellafield is not so much that nuclear power is dangerous but that Britain seems incapable of implementing any long-term engineering plan that comes its way, from high-speed trains to wind turbines or rocket launchers. Ref.: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/apr/19/sellafield-nuclear-plant-cumbria-hazards We have to ask what is the true cost of electricity generated in this fashion? By the time all the cleaning up costs have been added, it is surely not economically sensible, nor can it be sustainable. Sellafield's former managing director Brian Watson is joining the KeySource Group as senior associate consultant and director of its UK and European strategic consulting services. Mr Watson said: “I feel both privileged and delighted to join with KeySource given their track record of strategic successes working in the US and UK nuclear markets. “With the recent award of the Sellafield PBO contract, upcoming major decommissioning programmes, and the wave of new-build power plants, KeySource is well positioned to help shape the future of the nuclear markets in the UK and Europe.” Ref.: Whitehaven News Article, 3/10/08 - Not that any of the public - let alone the politicians for the area, would know anything about this wave of new-build power plants back then, of course. And the Politician says: Mr. J. Reed announced an interest: "I should declare an interest in Sellafield. Although I have no direct financial interest, I am a former employee of the plant." We have to note the qualification there, and ask whether Mr. Reed has any indirect interest? If nothing else, he has surely earned a seat on the board for his stirling assistance in promoting the nuclear industry! Actually, the problems of Sellafield have even been acknowledged by the arch-supporter, Mr. J. Reed. In a debate on "Energy Security and Nuclear Non-Proliferation, Hansard 1 July, 2009, Column 133WH, Mr. Reed said: "There have been significant processing problems at SMP, which have caused Sellafield management, the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority and the government to assess the future of SMP for a number of years. That is not a new development." "[It] has underperformed, but it will have a use until a new MOX plant is built at Sellafield." Why build more underperforming plants? How many more plants will it take to do the work that the original plant was supposed to achieve? |
|
Quotes
“Electricity is but the fleeting by-product from nuclear power. The actual product is forever-deadly radioactive waste. The product is poison.” Michael Keegan, Coalition for a Nuclear-Free Great Lakes Tim Farron (Westmorland & Lonsdale, Liberal Democrat): In all of that, it is essential that local communities are in control of their own destiny. As we have seen from the loss of post offices, the decline of many communities and the cuts to rural health services, there is an overwhelming sense of anger at things being done to us without our consent. We are sometimes offered consultations, but that has become a meaningless word under this Labour Government. Never have we been more consulted and less listened to. The top-down decisions to close jobcentres in rural areas, rob our rural communities of post offices, take away rural tax offices, force through the reduction in social housing stock and remove acute hospital services have all damaged our rural communities, but we were given no say in them. Source: Hansard HC Deb, 15 June 2009, c62 Nick Herbert (Shadow Secretary of State for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs, Environment, Food & Rural Affairs; Arundel & South Downs, Conservative) During the construction of THORP, a heavily contractorised work force from all over the United Kingdom created an unsustainable spike in the local economy. Neither the rise nor the fall of the spike was properly planned for. Consequently, the local economy overheated and, once construction came to an end, the spike rapidly disappeared, leaving a deflated economy and an enfeebled supply chain. For markets to grow, take hold and work, economies need businesses that are not only flexible and responsive but socially responsible. Source: Hansard HC Deb, 15 June 2009, c692 I agree with my right hon. and learned Friend. It is important to remember that rural areas are not a theme park. We cannot allow rural communities to be dormitories, where people only live, then go to work somewhere else. We must have sustainable, vibrant communities and remember the importance of farming and agriculture in those communities to manage the land. Farmers need to be allowed to get on with their businesses. Source: Hansard HC Deb, 15 June 2009, c41 Does he agree that we need to do an awful lot more in this country to ensure that supermarkets exercise a much greater duty of care towards our farmers? Source: Hansard HC Deb, 15 June 2009, c59 Hilary Benn, Secretary of State for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs, Environment, Food & Rural Affairs: "There is no such thing as a separate rural economy." Julie Kirkbride (Bromsgrove, Conservative) How much of the UK's energy production will be sourced from nuclear by 2020? Edward Miliband (Secretary of State, Department for Energy and Climate Change; Doncaster North, Labour) That depends on how quickly the plans move forward. From 2018, the new stations will start to be built. As I said, the companies have plans for about 12 GW, which is more than existing capacity. I do not think that all of it will be built by 2020, but it will probably be built in the early part of the following decade. Source: Hansard HC Deb, 15 July 2009, c305 A member of Cumbria County Council, who for many years has been responsible for the county’s emergency plan should anything like a radioactive leak happen at Sellafield has criticised the proposed scheme at Kirksanton. Of the proposal for a power station on land owned by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) next to Sellafield he said: “I don’t have much of a problem with that because we already have a well developed emergency plan and a well educated local population. “What does concern me is the new reactors at Kirksanton and Braystones. What this does is it brings in an entirely new population being put at risk from these reactors. “As an emergency planner it creates major new problems but it all sounds as if the land has been sold and the job has been done.” NW Evening Mail, 19/3/09 (ref: http://www.nwemail.co.uk/news/barrow/we_don_t_want_toxic_coast___millom_nuclear_reaction_1_529023?referrerPath=news) [COMARE] did find an excess of leukaemia and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma near other nuclear installations including Sellafield. Between 1950 and 2000 there have been 21 serious incidents or accidents involving some off-site radiological releases that merited a rating on the International Nuclear Event Scale, one at level 5, five at level 4 and fifteen at level 3. Additionally during the 1950s and 1960s there were protracted periods of known, deliberate, discharges to the atmosphere of plutonium and irradiated uranium oxide particulates. These frequent incidents, together with the large 2005 Thorp plant leak which was not detected for nine months, have led some to doubt the effectiveness of the managerial processes and safety culture on the site over the years. Svend Auken, the Danish minister, called for urgent talks with Britain. He said it was "unpleasant to have a report which shows how poorly the safety work at Sellafield functions". The independent, 23/2/2000, in relation to the discharges from Sellafield into the Irish Sea, and the falsification of documentation in relation to a fuel rod shipped to Germany. In fact, the Nuclear Inspectorates report found that data had been falsified for over 4 years, and fuel assemblies shipped to Japan, Switzerland and Germany had been unsafely shipped. Nine years on and two more incidents are reported widely. Of course, rough justice does exist: on the very day the Prime Minister visited the plant last January, a drip was discovered: there was a slow leak of radioactive liquid from a valve flange on a condensate drain line from a ventilation duct which serves the Magnox fuel reprocessing plant. Initially the leak was recorded as an "anomaly", but in June this was raised a level, to "incident". On the more positive side, a leak which existed for half a century was finally sealed. However, the Irish were not overly impressed. "It defies belief that an organisation responsible for handling lethal radioactive waste would do nothing about a leak for such a long time. "It shows how the plant's management are contemptuous of both the Irish people and those British people living in Sellafield's vicinity. I've been there with a geiger counter, and it goes wild as you approach the plant. "People need to realise just how dangerous this place is," said Louth TD, Arthur Morgan. (Ref. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4161/is_20090621/ai_n32087262/) Sir Bernard Ingham, (Ref. http://www.sone.org.uk/images/stories/reform 20club.doc) (Not contiguous paragraphs.) "I shall sum up the politics of nuclear energy at the start. Until last week policy was made by impractical crackpot zealots dominating politicians with no backbone or, even less, knowledge of the subject. We have drifted for years. "Last week the Government, in some desperation, broke out of the Green straitjacket by opening the way to a new nuclear future. This has been a long time coming – and possibly too late for the good of the economy. " "This is a classic example of the results of a vigorous, committed tail wagging a passive and cowed dog." "For sake of completeness, there have also been some expensive problems with nuclear processing technology at Sellafield." "I doubt whether we would now be going nuclear if politicians were not becoming acutely aware that they could be marked down in history any time in the future as the foolish virgins who allowed the lights to go out." With management like this, the input from an ex-PR manager, now MP, and the various committees all stuffed with ex-industry employees and pro-nuclear lobbyists, we should be greatly afeared of any further nuclear development on the Cumbrian coast. Let each area around the country develop the power stations it requires; why should Cumbria be despoiled for the next hundred years or so, merely to export energy to those not willing to do their own dirty work? We are given one reason: employment. With Sellafield closing within ten years (unless the MP has his way and they build more processing plants) unemployment is set to rise dramatically. The figures suggest that all those employed at Sellafield are Cumbrians. Is this truly the case? We think not. We believe (and the Doll Report seems to confirm this) that there was a great influx into the area from Northumberland and elsewhere. After all, how else could the higher incidence of leukemias in the area be explained, without blaming the industry? From (Ref.: http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/pressure-grows-to-sack-sellafield-chiefs-over-false-nuclear-safety-records-724552.html) we learn: UK authorities should ensure the Thorp plant at Sellafield remains permanently closed down, it was claimed today as the nuclear operators were fined €743,000 following a radioactive leak. Around 83,000 litres of acid containing 20 tonnes of uranium and 160kg of plutonium escaped from a broken pipe into a sealed concrete holding site at the Thorp plant in west Cumbria in April 2005. Environment Minister Dick Roche stressed safety issues and concerns remain around Sellafield. The operator of the plant, British Nuclear Group Sellafield Ltd, were fined €743,000 and €101,000 costs by Carlisle Crown Court today. The operators had pleaded guilty at an earlier hearing to three counts of breaching conditions attached to the Sellafield site licence, granted under the Nuclear Installations Act 1965. Mr Roche welcomed the actions of the UK Regulator in holding the operators accountable for the serious lapses in safety procedures at the plant. “The level of this fine, together with the fines already imposed by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority earlier this year, goes some way towards reflecting the serious issues which resulted in the leak of this large volume of toxic material. "However it gives little comfort that the poor, ongoing safety culture identified can, or will, be tackled by the UK authorities,” Mr Roche said. “We have been here before. The new safety dawn promised, and ultimately signed off on, by the UK regulatory authorities has proved to be false. The Irish Government’s concerns are in no way diminished by this episode. "This leak provides further evidence, if such were needed, that the UK authorities should make the current shutdown of the Thorp plant a permanent feature.” Richard Matthews, prosecuting, said the first indication of a leak at the Thermal Oxide Reprocessing Plant (Thorp) was on August 24, 2004 when 50 grams of uranium was detected following a sample test. The full extent of the leak was finally uncovered on April 14, 2005 and Thorp was shut down four days later and remains closed. The minister said the Irish Government would continue to hold the UK government accountable and responsible for the operation of the Sellafield plant. “As Minister for the Environment, I will continue to articulate these concerns clearly and consistently, not only to the UK Government and Administration, but also to the European Commission,” Mr Roche said. The court heard that the leak should have been detected within days rather than eight months. Mr Justice Openshaw said British Nuclear Group Sellafield did not have a good safety record. The court heard that the company had seven previous convictions on safety related matters and had received fines totalling more than €171,000 but none of these involved a leak. The court was told that a change in the handling process had caused the leak. In a statement the Health and Safety Executive, which brought the case, said: “Our extensive investigation into the events at Thorp has shown that British Nuclear Group Sellafield Ltd fell well below required standards for a considerable period of time, something we are not prepared to tolerate.” |
| Anyone
in any doubt about the current series of magazines issued with the
Whitehaven News each week, entitled, somewhat pretentiously, "West
Cumbrian Futures", need only to read the sub-title - "In association
with the NDA and Energus". Issue 34: August 2009 edition has a wonderful piece of guff from Energus' chief executive. Surprisingly, not everyone comes to Cumbria to look at industrial developments. We wonder if this person is unique, or just in need of his job? Eat your heart out Julia Bradbury! Who needs all that Wainwright stuff? |
 |
| It
will come
as no surprise to you that there is a slight element of bias, apart
from his salary, of course, which allows the chief executive to wax so
lyrically. To quote from the Energus web site: 'ENERGUS is a limited company overseen by a partnership between the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, the Northwest Development Agency, West Lakes Renaissance and Sellafield Ltd. Additional representatives from local industry make up its Board of Directors. In addition to the partners referred to above funding has also been secured from the Northern Way and the European Regional Development Fund initiatives. This iconic development is a key part of a drive to turn West Cumbria into a global centre for energy, environment and technology, consistent with the aims of the West Cumbria Masterplan and the Energy Coast initiative.' Or, as we know them, the usual manipulative quangos out to enhance their status at the cost of the Cumbrian coastline, with no mention of personal gain. Sometimes referred to as Jamie's Gang. [As an aside, we approached the Northwest Development Agency for assistance in tarmacing a dirt track leading to the railway station at Braystones. Beyond the railway station the lane crosses the Barrow to Carlisle railway line, via a self-operated crossing, to serve the beach community. It is a difficult proposition to maintain it - almost as difficult as trying to find out who owns it. In the past Sellafield and Network Rail both chipped in with assistance towards the cost of materials. Volunteers then fill in the pot-holes. Sadly, it has become more heavily-used and needs almost constant refurbishment - hence our approach to the Northwest Development Agency. After they managed to lose our initial request, after several weeks we made a personal visit to their Workington office. Here we were given hope; the mail was eventually found and forwarded to the regional headquarters, where it got lost again. After further enquiry we were eventually told that the agency don't actually have any money to distribute, they merely make recommendations to the government with regard to funding of projects. What they really meant to say was, "NO". Strange then that they are credited with so much of the funding for the nuclear industry. (Or that they even managed to fund new drainage, new seating, a new stand and a new scoreboard for Old Trafford Cricket Club. The area headquarters is in Warrington - not very far away from Old Trafford.)] As if to confirm our deep concerns about the secret gang-mentality of those supposedly improving the area, we note two articles on the front page of the Whitehaven News for 30/7/09. The first relates to a Conservative councillor being turned away from a meeting at which future healthcare plans were to be debated. We are not in the slightest bit political, recent events having amply demonstrated the nature of the beast, but the local MP tried to justify his colleague's action by reportedly saying, ". . . This was not a political meeting - only those people who have helped bring the new build to this point, who have a genuine focus and who are committed to its success were invited". Would a fair interpretation be, only "Yes" men are allowed a voice in Mr. Reed's kind of democracy? Certainly our experiences of meetings to discuss the future have met with the "only if you're in our gang" mentality. As another example of this restriction on free speech: why was the subject of the nuclear industry's effect on health and the environment taboo at the April and May meetings to "consult" residents? "The nuclear industry is here, and here to stay. We will not permit matters of health and the environment to be included in these discussions." Yet these are the prime arguments against the industry. Without these considerations there is little to object to, surely? With these, however, it is entirely different. "Radiation is thought to have been contributed to the death of the former Sellafield worker . . ." "Whitehaven magistrates heard that two workers received an internal dose of radiation during the decontamination of an area of concrete floor." "Sellafield admitted that it had breached health and safety laws." Surely, these are important matters? They are in one week's newspapers, (the Whitehaven News for the week ending 31/7/09) and there are similar stories almost every week. What about RWE and its purported concerns for good practise and observation of proper processes? "Firefighters
have
brought under control a major blaze at Tilbury Power Station in Essex. In another example of the secrecy that surrounds these people: RWE n-power, who are proposing to build at Braystones wrote to a few selected people the day before concluding the purchase of farmland, to advise them. The letter, of course, arrived the day the deal was concluded. So much for openness and transparency. Interestingly,
Copeland Council,
not the highest ranking outfit in New Labour's targets and performance
league table in any category,
is
rated
323rd out of 352 councils in permitting locals to
influence decisions.
You
do indeed have to be in the
"gang" to have any influence.
Yet Sellafield and the NDA seem to have no difficulty in communicating
their ideas to either Copeland Council or Cumbria County Council.
We note elsewhere the presence of employees, or ex-employees,
associated with
Sellafield in both organisations, as well as the many quangos and
sub-groups.
Chance? Does the money distributed by the nuclear industry have
no influence at all? If not, why do they continue to distribute
it?
Each
week
the propaganda tells us how much we are in favour of new build for
nuclear power stations and how much more money the NDA and Sellafield
are pouring into the local economy.
We note the forthcoming 400 acre land sale of "agricultural land" around Sellafield. We see the plans for an industrial estate in Beckermet. We read of the bigoted policitians' "Energy Coast Masterplan" and the developments at Kirksanton and Braystones. It doesn't take much imagination to see that from east of Barrow to north of Maryport will become a huge ribbon of industrial estates in a throwback to the Victorian industrial age, where there was little or no consideration of the damage being done to the populace and the environment. How little our politicians have learned. Even queries to central government about the planning procedures are countered by the planning system - with its already scant regard for public input - being amended so that approval can be made much more quickly! (i.e. with even less chance of the public having a say in their local amenity.) So said Mr. Miliband talking on the Andrew Marr Show. The
following article
has been written by an expert from the group Radiation Free
Lakeland.
It is a chilling indictment of the government's laissez-faire attitude to the nuclear industry. Nuclear
power trashing the
climate
Wednesday, 12 August 2009 The Nuclear Fuel cycle produces greenhouse gases thousands of times more potent than carbon dioxide. Following a Freedom of Information request from Radiation Free Lakeland it has come to light that Sellafield (no longer producing electricity) quadrupled its emissions of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) from the period 2007 to 2008. HFC’s are hundreds, and can be thousands of times, more powerful than carbon dioxide. The reporting threshold is 100kg but Sellafield produced over 4 times this amount in 2008 alone. Last week’s report urging new nuclear build published by former energy minister Malcolm Wicks (now the government’s “Special Representative on International Energy”) proclaims new nuclear build would “boost energy security” and “tackle climate change.” Regarding “energy security,” the known UK resource of uranium is on Orkney where the Orcadians successfully won a battle in the 1970’s to keep their uranium in the ground. Regarding climate change Wick’s report misleads the public into believing that nuclear power does not produce Green House Gases. This assertion is clearly untrue. Far from being the saviour of planet Earth, it was nuclear power that first blew a hole in the ozone layer. Apart from hydrofluorocarbons and other potent greenhouse gas emissions, the nuclear cycle absolutely relies on the production of chemicals such as concentrated nitric acid in large quantities. Nitrous oxide (N2O) is produced by nitric acid production and is not only 310 times more powerful than CO2 but it lasts over 100 years in the troposphere. According to the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, Sellafield is home to the most dangerous concoction of tens of millions of gallons of nitric acid (1086.7 m3) in High Level Liquid Waste tanks holding “nitric acid solution containing fission products, some actinides and some solids”. One teaspoon (0.2 ounces) of nitric acid is corrosive to mucous membranes and/or fatal. Fossil fuel and the internal combustion engine has done much to trash the environment but fossil fuel is well and truly trumped by nuclear power at the top of the polluting industrial food chain and reliant on all other polluters for its existence. For instance, Sellafield spent £30 million last year on gas at the nearby “Fellside” gas plant built at the nuclear industry’s behest to insure “security of supply” for a nuclear plant that no longer produces electricity. A spokesperson for Radiation Free Lakeland said, “Malcolm Wick’s dodgy dossier is in the same spirit as the dodgy dossier presented as an excuse for the Iraq ‘war’. Never mind the known link between nuclear power plants and cancers, it is obvious that nuclear power is neither “home grown” no “climate friendly, ” to pretend otherwise is the most vicious confidence trick imaginable." HFC’s are hundreds and can be thousands of times more powerful than carbon dioxide. (Ref.: http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/montreal-protocol/) Some estimates suggest that increases in HFC use could overwhelm all the planned cuts in CO2 emissions by 2040, releasing the equivalent of hundreds of gigatonnes of CO2. (Ref.: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/may/04/obama-hfc-carbon-climate) Following a Freedom of Information request from Radiation Free Lakeland it has come to light that Sellafield (no longer producing electricity) quadrupled its emissions of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) from the period 2007 to 2008: (10689349) - initial NDA response extract: Hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs): 2007: 176kg (Figure from Magnox, Thorp and FCHP). 2008: 431kg (Figure from Magnox, Thorp and FCHP). the reporting threshold for HFCs is 100kg. Energy Security Paper backs Dash for Homegrown Energy (Ref.: http://www.malcolmwicks.org.uk/energy) In Feb '77, the Orkney Islands Council had unanimously rejected an application from the SSEB for permission to begin uranium prospecting. (Ref.: hhttp://www10.antenna.nl/wise/b5/uranium.html) Nuclear Power first blew a hole in the ozone layer, “In July 1962 NASA announced that high altitude nuclear tests had created a new radiation belt 750 miles deep, girdling the earth. …………military tests have massively contributed to ozone depletion and global warming”. (Ref.: Dr Rosalie Bertell - "Planet Earth the Latest Weapon of War" - The Women's Press, London, 2000.) The nuclear cycle absolutely relies on the production of chemicals (Ref.: The Nuclear Fuel Cycle – Royal Society of Chemistry, http://www.rsc.org/images/essay7_tcm18-17769.pdf http://www.2oc.co.uk/faqs.htm) Sellafield is home to the most dangerous concoction of tens of millions of gallons of nitric acid (1086.7 m3) in High Level Liquid Waste tanks holding “nitric acid solution containing fission products, some actinides and some solids”. (Click here for reference.) Known link between nuclear power plants and cancers. http://www.whitehavennews.co.uk/news/radiation_link_to_death_of_campaigner_1_591153?referrerPath=home/vote_2_3708 http://www.opendemocracy.net/blog/ourkingdom-theme/marianne-birkby/2009/07/30/dodging-the-evidence-leukemias-and-nuclear-power-plants Just to further illustrate our point about Sellafield events taking a regular chunk of the Whitehaven News, the August 6th edition has the headline on P. 3, "Sellafield's
knuckles rapped over radioactive water spill"
We mention the leak (noticed, somewhat embarrassingly, during a visit
by the Prime Minister) elsewhere. The leak had been extant
for
at least 14 months. A report on the incident by
the
Environment Agency (not always known for perspicacity) stated:
"An
initial investigation has identified a number of areas where the
company failed to comply with the requirements of its certificate of
authorisation, notably in the use of inadequately designed and
installed equipment; in not carrying out sufficient
inspection
and maintenance of equipment and in not establishing clear
responsibility for managing the equipment in question."
The
report points out that the
public are not allowed into the area which was contaminated, so there
was no danger to them at any time. Surely employees are just
members of the public who happen to work at Sellafield? Somewhat
lamely, the
customary spokesperson stressed, "Since taking over control
of Sellafield
Ltd., in November, the new executive team is continuing to emphasise
the importance of safety, disciplined professionalism and first-class
conduct of operations".
One has to wonder just how many
of the established managers actually got changed when the new regime
came in. If, as we suspect, not many, then were they not the
ones responsible for the failure in the first place? How
long
will they keep playing the New Kid on the Block card?
What guarantees are there that any
company will fare any better - especially one trying new designs?
Sellafield has had over half a century to get things right.
RWE, we are led to believe, will be able to design and
commission a new type of reactor (of a similar type to the one causing
the Finnish government to despair) on greenfield sites, with no
infrastructure in place, no means of obtaining resources without
considerable environmental damage, and distribute it without detracting
considerably from the amenity of the whole area, with no problems and
on budget. Hmm. Dream on . . .
Also a shortened version from the past: http://multinationalmonitor.org/hyper/issues/1984/07/adkins.html by Jason Adkins, a freelance writer in Washington, D.C. "Everyone knows the whole area near the Sellafield nuclear plant is radioactive," explains one nearby resident, a British Rail conductor who won't let his family near the beaches there. British Nuclear Fuels is waging a defensive credibility campaign to convince its critics at home and abroad that its plant is safe. Government records indicate that over a quarter of a ton of highly radioactive plutonium has been discharged into the Irish Sea since 1952". Barrow Action Group head Jean Emery argues that British Nuclear Fuels has violated the human rights of local people with the radioactive discharges. "Everything we know about it scares me," she says, "from the presence of radioactive isotopes in fish, to the fact that many birds are no longer breeding in local estuaries, to the high incidence of cancer in the area." The radioactive slick originated when Windscale workers inadvertently discharged large quantities of radioactive solvents used to flush out storage tanks during maintenance operations. The discharge of 1,500 curies did not exceed permissible levels of 3,000 curies over a three month period. But the company conceded that concentrations of radioactivity or particulate material could have a "significant health risk" if handled for a period of several hours or if ingested. Plant critics claim that the most severely contaminated flotsam and beaches from the November discharge had produced a radioactivity count that would reach up to the permissible annual exposure in several hours. Normal background radiation measures ten counts per second. By contrast, the contaminated beaches near Sellafield had counts above 1,000 per second for over nine months. (The United Kingdom's permitted levels for public exposure to radioactivity are the highest in the world, some 20 times higher than those in the U.S.) Although British Nuclear Fuels performed extensive cleaning of 15 miles of contaminated beach and removed thousands of tons of sand, flotsam with considerable levels of radioactivity was found on the seashore 25 miles north of Sellafield. Seven months after the contamination took place, restrictions on the use of area beaches were relaxed so that people could walk there, but not pick up anything. Parents were advised to keep children away. To the dismay of BNFL, in early August [1984] the Director of Public Prosecutions decided to prosecute the company for last November's radioactivity release, charging that BNFL failed to maintain proper records, and to keep radioactive materials under control and discharges "as low as reasonably achievable." Company executives may be named in the suit. Sir Douglas Black confirmed the high incidence of local leukemia, and acknowledged that radiation is the only "known" cause of leukemia in children. While the report stopped short of saying that Sellafield was responsible for the cancer, it didn't rule out that possibility, and Black called for more extensive, historical inquiries into local residents' health. Back in 2001, Greg Palast wrote a very cogent analysis of the Enron fraud in America. The basis of this is that George Bush Sen. brought in deregulation in return for the energy companies donating $16 million to the Republicans. (7 times what was given to the Democrats.) Regulation prior to G. Bush Sen. had resulted in several US companies being fined very heavily for manipulating prices of electricity and maximising profits by cutting maintenance down-times and reducing staff levels, subsequently lying to the regulators and falsifying data to cover up what they were doing. When the market was deregulated, Enron and a few others saw the opportunity to blackmail electricity users and California was the first to suffer. The energy companies spent $39 million on defeating a referendum which would have resulted in the industry controls being retained, capping the charges to users and specifying maintenance levels, etc. A further $37 million was used to "lobby" and assist in politician's campaigns. So deregulation was achieved. A promised price cut of 20% in San Diego actually resulted in a rise of 300%. The supplies to the state were deliberately manipulated so that the energy companies could charge whatever they liked. According to this article, the British National Grid also had a play on this market, by buying Niagra Mohawk, getting rid of 800 workers - thus saving on the wage bill, enabling a bonus for stockholders approaching $90 billion. Source: http://www.coldtype.net/Assets.04/Voices.04/Voices126.04.pdf |