(January 27, 2006) The UK government’s adviser on nuclear waste, Nirex, has urged the Government to formulate a plan to dispose of the country’s existing radioactive waste before making plans to build new nuclear plants and creating even more.
(641.5745) WISE Amsterdam - The Royal Society, the UK’s national science academy, echoed Nirex’s call and urged the Government to create a new expert commission to advise on the safe storage of radioactive wastes.
The Committee on Radioactive Waste Management (CoRWM), an independent committee appointed by the Government in 2003, has been charged with the monumental task of reviewing the options and identifying methods for managing radioactive wastes and is due to release its final report in July. These recommendations cannot however be seen as a ‘solution’. The published draft of CoRWM’s final report states, “If Ministers accept our recommendations, the UK’s nuclear waste problem will not be solved. Having a strategy is a start. The real challenge follows.” This is possibly one reason why the Royal Society is already calling for a new committee to continue where CoRWM stops.
Latest Count
In October 2005, Nirex released its latest report providing an inventory of the UK’s radioactive wastes based on stocks held in April 2004 - this is currently produced every three years. The inventory catalogues waste currently stored and estimates waste still to be created from the operating and decommissioning of existing facilities, assuming that no new plants are to be built.
This latest report shows an increase in low and intermediate level wastes (by 35 and 2 percent respectively) and a decrease of 11 percent in high level waste giving the UK a total of 2.3 million cubic metres of radioactive wastes. According to Nirex, the decrease in the amount of high level waste from the 2001 inventory is due to the reclassification of waste from Dounreay, which has been packaged in concrete drums and as the waste is no longer producing heat (a characteristic of HLW), it has been reclassified as intermediate level waste.
Of the vast total amount of UK wastes, 1,340 cubic metres are made up of high-level waste (HLW), 217,000 cubic metres of intermediate level waste (ILW) and 2.06 million cubic metres of low-level waste (LLW). Although HLW - the most dangerous category of nuclear waste that kills almost instantly following direct exposure - accounts for a relatively small volume of the total amount of wastes, it does account 95 percent of the total radioactivity and is dangerous for thousands of years.
Nirex calculates that 94 percent of existing wastes comes from the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel. This is a process that the nuclear industry likes to pretend is akin to recycling when in fact, instead of reusing waste products to reduce waste, this process actually creates more waste than originally existed.
Large volumes of land on some nuclear sites is believed to have been contaminated by leakages of radioactive liquids but most of it is still to be characterized meaning that the total volume of radioactive waste could still increase significantly.
The UK’s LLW is stored in underground vaults at the national waste facility at Drigg in Cumbria but there are no facilities for the permanent storage of ILW and HLW and Drigg itself is expected to be full within the next two years. Just 8 percent of all nuclear waste is ‘securely stored’, the rest is held at 37 temporary sites, 24 of which are coastal and could be at risk from the elements and rising sea levels.
The cost of burying the UK’s nuclear waste has been estimated to be potentially as high as 85 billion pounds (nearly US$152 billion). The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) is due to publish new figures and has said that it is “almost certain” that its initial estimate of 56 billion pounds (US$100 billion) will be revised upwards following closer inspection of conditions at some of the older nuclear sites, Sellafield and Dounreay in particular. In addition, the initial estimate had only taken into account the costs of decommissioning at civil nuclear sites and did not include weapons facilities or privately-owned plants like Sizewell B.
The government-owned company Nirex, recently made independent of the nuclear industry, advocates for the construction of a geological repository for all wastes projected to cost around 7 billion pounds (US$12.5 billion). An earlier search for a deep repository was dropped in the 1990s amid public concerns. Any new repository would need to be constructed between 300 metres and 2 kilometres underground and designed to withstand up to one million years of geological change. An incredibly tall order considering that no one can possibly claim to accurately calculate the kind of geological changes that could occur in the next million years.
Secret Waste Dumps
The Sunday Herald has reported on a recently launched investigation into the risks posed to public health by secret radioactive waste dumps on the coast of North Ayrshire in Scotland. The newspaper states that thousands of cubic metres of wastes from the Hunterston nuclear power station were dumped in five shoreline pits and left accessible to the public. The pits are located on reclaimed land outside the grounds of Hunterston.
The wastes dumped - around 6500 cubic metres of low-level wastes including contaminated soil, rubble and concrete dumped between 1977 and 1982 - came from the Hunterston A site and were recently discovered after monitoring of the Ayrshire coast revealed surprisingly high levels of radioactivity. Hunterston A closed down sixteen years ago but the reactors at the B plant still generate electricity. British Nuclear Group (BNG), the state-owned company running the site (and formerly BNFL), has stated that documents detailing the material dumped in the pits have been disposed of after they were damaged when water leaked into the room where they were stored. BNG has recruited consultants to find out precisely what the pits contain and how the wastes therein should be treated.
As with many coastal nuclear sites, the long-term effects of climate change on the coastline is being investigated.
Rita Holmes, representative of the Fairlie Community Council on the Hunterston Site Stakeholder Group, said of the industry “It dumped contaminated waste on public land for years and then managed to lose the records… As a result we now have no clear idea of the threat the pits pose to public health.” She added, “… if there is a real risk of erosion, flooding or leakage, waste will need to be dug out and taken elsewhere. Goodness knows what problems remain to be discovered.” It was Holmes’ persistence that led to information on the pits being revealed.
The Greens’ spokesperson on nuclear issue, Chris Balance MSP (Member of the Scottish Parliament) said, “This new disturbing fiasco at Hunterston is yet another example of the problems of dealing with a dirty and dangerous technology of the past. The sooner we move on to sustainable energy for Scotland the better.”
BNG has admitted that the public had been able to access the pits but claimed that the levels of radioactivity were too low to pose any risk.
Old Waste and New Nuclear
Trade and Industry Secretary Alan Johnson launched the government’s latest energy review on January 23 - presumably the last review, results of which were released just a few years ago, had not been thorough enough or had given the wrong answers. Tony Blair has been sending out signals that he is set on the idea of building new nuclear power plants to supposedly fill the energy gap that would be created when the current crop of aged reactors are shut down and to aid the UK with its climate targets. But if it is correct that the UK will have to deal with a serious shortage of energy once the old nuclear plants are shut down, one would presume that at least one of the government’s highly paid advisors or consultants had noted that during the last review. Why then was this urgent need for a new generation of nuclear plants not made clear to the country’s citizens earlier - say before the last election?
In a recent interview with the Guardian, senior research fellow at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research in the UK, Kevin Anderson said that claims touting nuclear power as the UK’s only means to achieve greenhouse gas emissions targets were fundamentally wrong. Dr Anderson went on to call the standard of debate on the issue “abysmal” adding, “that argument is way too simplistic. We can easily deal with climate change without nuclear power.” He further explained that the differing demands of the transport and heating sectors meant that nuclear power supplied around 3.6 percent of the UK’s total energy use and that moderate increases in energy efficiency coupled with fuel efficient cars would almost halve demand.
Senior scientists and members of CoRWM have voiced unease and anger at the government’s seeming willingness to replace soon to be retired nuclear reactors while the very serious issue of what to do with existing wastes remains in question. For some 30 years now, successive governments have avoided taking action on the impossible problems of nuclear waste, some of which would have to be stored for countless generations to come, while continuing to allow more wastes to be produced.
Environmentalists in the UK have pointed out that the waste mountain would increase at least four fold should the government give its blessing to the construction of ten new nuclear reactors.
John Dalton, Nirex corporate communications manager said, “…it would be sensible for us to consider what we are going to do with this waste before we enter into a new-build scenario.”
It would be wise for the Government to listen to the many scientists and analysts that believe, and can prove, that new nuclear build is of no benefit where the urgent problem of climate change is concerned. It would be a brave government that can turn its back on the cheap rhetoric of the nuclear industry and make the most sustainable choice for today and for future generations.
Sources: The Independent, January 24 & 3, 2006; BBC News, January 19, 2006; The Guardian, January 17, 2006; Sunday Herald, January 15, 2006; N-Base Briefing 481 & 482, January 14 & 21, 2006; www.corwm.org