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STOA report condemns reprocessing

Nuclear Monitor Issue: 
#559
07/12/2001
Article

(December 7, 2001) A report published by the European Parliament's Scientific and Technological Options Assessment unit (STOA) paints a grim picture of reprocessing at Sellafield and La Hague. The report states that accidental releases of radioactive materials could lead to more than one million fatal cancers in the long term, and questions the European Commission's verification of the two reprocessing plants.

(559.5348) WISE Amsterdam - The 160-page report was produced by a team from WISE-Paris (which is entirely independent of WISE Amsterdam) with contributions from consultants in the UK and the US. It gathers together a vast quantity of information related to La Hague and Sellafield, and presents a clear, persuasive case that reprocessing is dangerous and uneconomic. Furthermore, it questions whether the European Commission is in a position to fulfil its obligations under the Euratom Treaty concerning the two plants.

The report has a history of controversy (see box "STOA Report causes stir" in WISE News Communique 557.5332, "IAEA: 'No sanctuary any more, no safety zone' "). Its origins date back to 1995, when Dr. W Nachtwey and a group of 22 senior citizens from Hamburg in Germany petitioned the European Parliament, raising concerns about the radioactive pollution of the North Sea and the Atlantic Ocean due to the operation of Sellafield and La Hague. However, it was not until 2000 that a project to investigate the effects of pollution from Sellafield and La Hague was included in the STOA Work Plan.

"Hassles and attempts to sabotage the project"
WISE-Paris was awarded the contract for this project - a choice of contractor that was clearly not popular with the nuclear lobby and their supporters in the European Parliament. Although WISE-Paris responded to the STOA Panel's concerns - for example, by adding two experts in the field of radiation effects to the project team when it was felt that this area needed more attention - this was clearly not enough for some MEPs. On 21 June 2001, after complaints about the possible lack of objectivity of the study, the STOA Panel decided to ask independent experts to review the report once it was complete.

However, not long after the report's completion, and before the reviews were produced, the terrorist attacks of 11 September took place. Soon afterwards, WISE-Paris produced a 13-page report on the effects of an aircraft crashing into La Hague, which we referred to in WISE News Communique 554.5316, "Consequences of attacks on nuclear installations". Later, WISE-Paris produced a 7-page report on the effects of an aircraft crashing into Sellafield.

Since some of the data used in these reports were also used for the main STOA report, WISE-Paris was accused of breaking the confidentiality clause in their contract. While making this accusation, the STOA Panel failed to mention the terrorist attacks and the urgent need to draw attention to the risks at La Hague and Sellafield - an "oversight" that, interestingly, was not made by those who were reviewing the WISE-Paris report.

Three separate reviews were produced. By and large, the reviewers praised the report and refuted much of the criticism from MEPs and the nuclear lobby. For example, one of the reviewers, Prof. Jean-Claude Zerbib, stated that "the report has no equivalent as far as overall consideration and critical analysis of each of the 'end of cycle' problems posed by nuclear fuel are concerned". Another reviewer, Prof. Peter Mitchell, said "The report deals objectively with the subject of doses to individual members of critical groups..." and Prof. Ian Croudace and Dr. Phillip Warwick, who also reviewed the report, made similar comments. Criticism was mostly limited to disagreements over which results deserve emphasis, a few minor corrections and recommendations for additional work.

However, these generally positive reviews did not stop the critics. "It is clear from these reviews that the WISE-Paris study wasn't objective and didn't rest on scientific information" was the comment of STOA Panel member Gordon Adam MEP. He regretted that the report had been used by anti-nuclear organizations in their campaigns against the nuclear industry, and added, "by raising the issue of aeroplane crashes they [WISE-Paris] are in fact playing into the hands of the terrorist organisations whose clear objective is to disrupt the global economy." Interestingly, on checking his parliamentary register of financial interests, it can be seen that last year he attended a "Foratom Accession Working Party" at Kozloduy nuclear power plant in Bulgaria, with his travel paid by industry lobby group Foratom.

Despite Gordon Adam's comments, the STOA Panel agreed to publish the report as "a first contribution to the scientific debate", pointing out that it is a working document and not an official publication of STOA.

 

WASTE TO JAPAN
The BNFL ship Pacific Sandpiper left the French port of Cherbourg on 5 December with 152 canisters of vitrified high-level waste from reprocessing Japanese waste at La Hague. The waste will travel to Japan via the Panama Canal despite the fact that in early October, the Panamanian legislature decided to propose a bill banning the transportation of radioactive materials through the canal. Greenpeace protested with banners describing the ship as a "floating Chernobyl". They criticized the Japanese, French and British nuclear industries for sending highly radioactive waste transports through the territorial waters of Third World countries.
CNIC Transport Watch, December 2001; Greenpeace France press release, 4 December 2001

The report was finally published on 22 November 2001. Mycle Schneider, director of WISE-Paris and coordinator of the study, said "This is great news after a long story of hassles and attempts to sabotage the project and publication".

Radioactive releases
The report contains an enormous amount of information about the consequences of operations at Sellafield and La Hague. Most of this information is not new - the report's real value is that all this information has been assembled, analyzed and compared to give a clear picture of the extent of radioactive releases and their possible consequences.

According to the report, 80% of the collective dose of the French nuclear industry and 90% of the radionuclide emissions and discharges from the UK nuclear program come from reprocessing. The report is notable for its use of collective dose calculations. These calculations illustrate the entire global impact of radioactive releases over a long period as pollution from the reprocessing plants is dispersed all over the world. The collective dose from ten years' operation of the two plants corresponds to about 1/7 of the collective dose from the Chernobyl accident.

Long-lived radionuclides such as iodine-129, which has a half-life of 16 million years, pose a particular problem. Iodine-129 discharges have risen over the past decade by a factor of about five, and discharges from La Hague and Sellafield in one year alone (1999) were eight times greater than released by the fallout from all nuclear weapons testing. The report includes graphs illustrating how discharges of iodine-129 and some other radionuclides have continued to increase at Sellafield and La Hague since the OSPAR agreements of the early 1990's, in which "Best Available Technology" was to be used to minimize discharges. France and the UK did not sign the agreements (see WISE News Communique 377.3700, "Stalemate over new waste dumping ban").

As well as collective dose calculations, the report also looks at the doses to "critical groups", such as those eating significant quantities of radioactively contaminated products from the region around a reprocessing plant. Here there is a lack of standardization between countries. Using the UK assumption that local consumers of seafood are the critical group for Sellafield results in doses that are within UK limits. However, using German statutory dose assessment assumptions doses 20 times the same limits were calculated in a report for the German Environment Ministry (see WISE News Communique 549.5276, " Sellafield: THORP customers threaten to withdraw business; discharge levels 20 times German standards"). These calculations were based on the use of seaweed as a fertilizer for animal feed crops and consumption of meat from the animals.

Leukemia clusters have been observed near both Sellafield (see WISE News Communique 513.5039, "New children's leukemia study: Gardner study not disproved") and La Hague (see WISE News Communique 448.4450, " Increase in cancers"). Research into these leukemia clusters is inconclusive, but the role of radiation as an initiating or contributing factor has not been ruled out. The report describes uncertainties in dose estimates, risk factors and the variety of possible radiation damage mechanisms, which may explain why the number of cancers expected according to conventional dose calculations is less than the observed number. It is also recommended that the role of chemical discharges as a contributing factor should be investigated, as French groups have suggested (see WISE News Communique 551.5291, "Leukemia around La Hague; link to the reprocessing plant?")

The report points out that past discharge levels were higher than current limits. This statement was criticized as misleading, though its truth was not denied. Clearly the failure to include the customary praise for reducing discharges (i.e. from "very high" to "high") which often appears in reports about Sellafield and La Hague was not to everyone's taste.

More than 1 million cancers possible from a major accident
As well as radioactive discharges during routine operation, the report looked at the consequences of a major accident. Two scenarios were investigated: a high-level waste tank accident at Sellafield and a spent fuel pool accident at La Hague. Both scenarios indicated the potential for releases tens of times larger than the Chernobyl accident, resulting in over a million fatal cancers. As noted above, WISE-Paris produced additional reports following the 11 September terrorist attacks to draw attention to the dangers. Following these reports, anti-aircraft missiles were installed at La Hague, though not at Sellafield. However, missiles do nothing to reduce the possibility of an accident caused by human error, equipment failure, fire or earthquake, which could have similar results, according to the main report.

Verification under Euratom Treaty "highly questionable"
One of the report's more controversial findings concerns the European Commission's role under the Euratom Treaty. Under Article 35 of the Euratom Treaty, each EU member state agrees to set up radiation monitoring facilities and the European Commission "may verify their operation and efficiency". However, since 1990 the Commission has only performed one verification visit to Sellafield (6-10 December 1993) and one to La Hague (22-26 July 1996). The report of the Sellafield visit contained no analysis, discussion of criticism. These activities are, according to the STOA report, "obviously not appropriate" to make effective use of the Commission's control rights under the Euratom treaty, and verify the operation and efficiency of radiation monitoring.

More controversial still, however, is Article 37, under which the European Commission assesses plans for disposal of radioactive waste in order to determine whether they are "liable to result in the radioactive contamination of the water, soil or airspace of another Member State". In order to give an Opinion on plans covering both routine discharges and possible accidents at reprocessing facilities, the European Commission apparently devoted just 2 man-months of work. This work included co-ordinating a Group of Experts of over 40 people. The STOA report concluded that it is therefore highly questionable whether the Commission is in a position to fulfil its obligations. However, one of the reviewers of the report, Prof. Mitchell, happened to be a member of the above-mentioned Group of Experts, and felt that the Commission has fulfilled its obligations under Article 37 "efficiently and expeditiously".

Not "if", but "when"
Commentators mostly agree that the days of reprocessing in Europe are numbered - the question is not "if", but "when" reprocessing at Sellafield and La Hague will cease. The STOA report's contribution to this is described by Prof. Croudace and Dr. Warwick in their review: "The STOA document provides a number of good reasons for curtailing nuclear reprocessing in favour of fuel storage on safety and financial grounds. The rate at which all of these seemingly inevitable changes will occur is the key question."

Many organizations will find that the report is of unprecedented value in the campaign to stop reprocessing. Indeed, it has already been used by the Irish government in its case against the UK over the Sellafield MOX Plant (see "Full steam ahead for UK nuclear industry's 'Titanic'" in this WISE News Communique). No doubt it will be cited in many more cases to come.

Sources:

  • Possible toxic effects from the nuclear reprocessing plants at Sellafield (UK) and Cap de la Hague (France), STOA Report, November 2001
  • Web site www.wise-paris.org
  • Emails from Mycle Schneider
  • Gordon Adam MEP, press release 24 October 2001
  • European Parliament web site www.europarl.eu.int

Contact: WISE-Paris, 31-33, rue de la Colonie, 75013 Paris, France Tel: +33 1 45 64 47 93. Fax: +33 1 45 80 48 58. Email: secretariat@wise-paris.org
Web: www.wise-paris.org