Archived press release

Foe demands end to british nuclear farce

26 January 1998

Friends of the Earth has welcomed the news in today's Sunday Times that Environment Minister Michael Meacher has informed Government colleagues that nuclear reprocessing at Sellafield has no commercial future. The Sunday Times also reports that the Government is to review the future of Sellafield in late 1998.

FOE has also called on the Government to order the Environment Agency to halt public consultations on opening more plant at Sellafield, until the new review of the future of Sellafield is completed. Last Monday, the Agency began consultations on the economic case for BNFL's new Mixed Oxide Fuel Plant at Sellafield, and for increasing radioactive discharges from the site.

The MOX plant will use plutonium separated from used nuclear fuel in the controversial THORP reprocessing plant. FOE has demanded that permission to operate the MOX plant be refused, because reprocessing is uneconomic and unnecessary, and the new plant will add to the UK's mounting legacy of radioactive waste. There are also serious safety concerns about the use of MOX fuel, and its transport by air to customers overseas.

BNFL has also applied for permission to increase radioactive discharges from Sellafield,because THORP has not operated as planned. THORP was meant to reprocess 7000 tons of used nuclear fuel within its first ten years of operation. In its first three years, BNFL predicted a throughput of 1700 tons. Only 1100 tons have so far been reprocessed and the plant has been hit by a series of technical problems. 60% of THORP throughput is from overseas, making Britain the world's nuclear dustbin. Following FOE's defeat of the NIREX proposal for an underground waste repository at Sellafield, further waste generated by reprocessing will have to be stored above ground for many decades, adding to the already massive bill facing the UK for nuclear waste management.

Recent research by the country's leading independent nuclear economists Gordon Mackerron and Mike Sadnicki of the Science Policy Research Unit at Sussex University(funded by FOE and COLA) has revealed the full extent of the bankruptcy of the UK nuclear industry.

• High Level Nuclear Waste (a waste product from reprocessing stored in tanks at Sellafield for cooling, for 50 years) could cost £11.1 billion for Magnox reactor waste and £540 million for Advanced Gas Cooled Reactor waste to manage

• (undiscounted). The nuclear industry has estimated only £350 million and £380 million respectively.

• On current plans the UK will have a plutonium stockpile of 100 tonnes by 2020 -management of the stockpile could cost over £2.3 billion (undiscounted). The Magnox Electric part of this bill will be over £1.6 billion, compared to industry estimates of £200 million.
  

The Government's Radioactive Waste Management Advisory Committee has also drawn attention to the lack of industry plans for dealing with HLW and plutonium. In 1997 RWMAC advised the Government to develop tests to ensure that spent fuel imported into UK for reprocessing was for genuine recycling of nuclear material, and not because host countries such as Germany and Japan did not have domestic spent fuel storage facilities.

Dr Patrick Green, FOE's Senior Nuclear Campaigner said today:

“Friends of the Earth is delighted that Michael Meacher has realised the bankruptcy of Sellafield and the British nuclear industry, and that he seems to share our hostility to the idea of trying to give it a future by allowing this country to become the world's nuclear dustbin. This issue is now a key test of the Labour Government's claim to be the 'first truly green Government ever'. Will John Prescott and Tony Blair back Meacher in his green stand? Or will they allow the nuclear industry to continue to pile up nuclear waste at Sellafield and add to the multi-billion pound clean up costs we already face. It is time to end the great British nuclear farce once and for all.”

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Published by Friends of the Earth Trust