Huge radioactive leak closes Thorp nuclear plant in Sellafield
Reports obtained from:
(1) The Guardian, (2) The Observer
Monday, 9 May, 2005
Sunday, 15 May, 2005
Huge radioactive leak closes Thorp nuclear plant
By Paul Brown, environment correspondent Guardian
A leak of highly radioactive nuclear fuel dissolved in concentrated nitric acid, enough to half fill an Olympic-size swimming pool, has forced the closure of Sellafield's Thorp reprocessing plant. The highly dangerous mixture, containing about 20 tonnes of uranium and plutonium fuel, has leaked through a fractured pipe into a huge stainless steel chamber which is so radioactive that it is impossible to enter.
Recovering the liquids and fixing the pipes will take months and may require special robots to be built and sophisticated engineering techniques devised to repair the £2.1bn plant.
The leak is not a danger to the public but is likely to be a financial disaster for the taxpayer since income from the Thorp plant, calculated to be more than £1m a day, is supposed to pay for the cleanup of redundant nuclear facilities.
The closure could hardly have come at a worse time for the nuclear industry. Britain is struggling to meet its target of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 20% of 1990 levels by 2010, despite a substantial programme of wind farm construction, while generating capacity will also be hit by the rundown of some of Britain's coal-fired power stations.
The decision on whether to build a new generation of nuclear power stations is among the most sensitive Tony Blair faces at the start of his third term.
A leak of a briefing paper to ministers on the nuclear option yesterday revealed that the contribution new nuclear capacity could make to cutting greenhouse gases had not yet been considered because of opposition from Margaret Beckett, secretary of state for environment, food and rural affairs.
The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, a quango which took over ownership of the plant from British Nuclear Fuels on April 1, has a £2.2bn cleanup budget for this year, its first year of operation, of which £560m was to come from the Thorp plant.
Richard Flynn, spokesman for the NDA, said: "If the income from the plant is not forthcoming then obviously it will put back plans for cleaning up."
On Friday the British Nuclear Group, a management company formed to run the Sellafield site on behalf of the NDA, held a meeting with the government safety regulator, the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate (NII), to discuss how to mop up the leak and repair the pipe. The company has to get the inspectors' approval before proceeding.
A problem at the plant was first noticed on April 19 when operators could not account for all the spent fuel that had been dissolved in nitric acid. It was supposed to be travelling through the plant to be measured and separated into uranium, plutonium and waste products in a series of centrifuges. Remote cameras scanning the interior of the plant found the leak.
Although most of the material is uranium, the fuel contains about 200kg (440lb) of plutonium, enough to make 20 nuclear weapons, and must be recovered and accounted for to conform to international safeguards aimed at preventing nuclear materials falling into the wrong hands. The liquid will have to be siphoned off and stored until the works can be repaired, but a method of doing this has yet to be devised.
The company has set up a board of inquiry to find out how the leak occurred. The NII will set up a separate investigation and has the power to prosecute if correct procedures have not been followed.
The Thorp plant produces uranium and plutonium from spent fuel in such large quantities that only a tiny proportion of it can ever be reused for reactor fuel. Its critics also claim it is uneconomic because it has never operated to design capacity since it opened 12 years ago, and is years behind schedule in fulfilling orders.
This has angered some customers and the British Nuclear Group is embroiled in a court case with one of its customers, the German owners of the Brokdorf power station, which is withholding fees of £2,772 a day for storage of spent fuel, claiming it should have been reprocessed years ago.
In 12 years Thorp has reprocessed 5,644 tonnes of fuel from its first 10-year target of 7,000 tonnes. Last year it failed to reach its target of 725 tonnes, achieving 590.
Martin Forwood, of Cumbrians Opposed to Radioactive Environment, said the NDA had been "naive" in placing trust on income from Thorp, given its track record. "Reprocessing is blatantly incompatible with the official cleanup remit of the NDA, which will now find itself out of pocket as a result of the latest Thorp accident. The new owners would do the taxpayer the greatest service by putting Thorp out of its misery and closing it once and for all."
The managing director of British Nuclear Group, Sellafield, Barry Snelson, who ordered the plant to be closed down, said: "Let me reassure people that the plant is in a safe and stable state."
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005
Close nuclear leak plant for good, says Sellafield
Thorp reprocessing should never be restarted - boss
By Oliver Morgan, industrial editor, The Observer
The owner of the Sellafield site in Cumbria, the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, wants its main reprocessing facility to shut forever following a leak of highly radioactive liquefied nuclear fuel containing plutonium and uranium. The move would bring an early end to the UK's reprocessing programme, which was conceived in the Sixties to provide plutonium for Britain's nuclear deterrent while recycling uranium for civil energy needs.
In any event, the leak of some 20 tonnes of uranium and plutonium fuel, dissolved in nitric acid, will keep the Thermal Oxide Reprocessing Plant (Thorp) shut for months.
But senior sources at the NDA, the government body set up to dismantle radioactive facilities at 20 sites across the UK, now believes that keeping the plant shut is the most economical option, and also one that would remove reprocessing - which has always attracted controversy - from the debate over building new nuclear stations which many believe the government is keen to initiate.
'The view is that Thorp should never restart,' said a senior source.
Officials indicate that, even when operational, the plant does not make money. Thorp's figures are not split out in the NDA's plan for 2005-6. However, the published figures show that, of a total budget of £2.2 billion, the NDA receives some £1.08bn from the commercial operations it inherited from British Nuclear Fuels. Of this, it expects to get £635.1 million from reprocessing and transporting nuclear material around the world.
A large proportion of this figure will be from Thorp's activities - reprocessing spent fuel from British Energy's nuclear power stations, along with contracts from Japan, Germany and other overseas customers. But the NDA also incurs huge costs from Sellafield, forecast to be £727.4m over 2005-6. Also, up to three new storage facilities for separated plutonium and uranium are needed, at a cost of nearly £200m each.
Meanwhile the NDA official said: 'The government is starting to think about new stations. The view is that it would be impossible to argue that there should be a new generation [of facilities] that relies on reprocessing.'
Closing Thorp would reduce the time it takes to run down the massive stockpile of 'highly active liquid' - spent nuclear fuel containing uranium and plutonium - by four and a half years. Nuclear regulators have insisted on the backlog being dealt with by 2015. And closure of Thorp would drastically reduce emissions into the Irish Sea, a continuing source of tension with the Irish government.
NDA chief executive Ian Roxburgh told The Observer that a decision on closure would be up to the government. He added: 'The NDA must produce by the autumn its plans for the 20 sites it operates, including Sellafield. The latest incident had clearly brought that forward.'
Meanwhile, sources at British Energy have indicated that the privatised nuclear operator wants to run any new nuclear power stations, but is not keen to take a major investment stake in any projects. There are doubts over whether private investors have the appetite to finance and build a new generation of reactors, given the volatility of energy markets.
The sources believe the operation of new plants should be kept separate from ownership and financing.
Copyright © 2005 The Observer
