sellafield update

national | miscellaneous | news report Thursday August 29, 2002 18:58 by ciara

trouble for sellafield

Devastating blow to Sellafield- good news for anti-nuclear campaigners

The nuclear plant at Sellafield in Britain has been dealt a devastating blow this evening, and anti-nuclear campaigners are confident that the plant is now in grave danger. Greenpeace have claimed that Japan which is Sellafield’s biggest overseas client, has ordered a halt to its plutonium trade with the plant. This decision came in the light of reactor faults which were discovered at one of Japan’s biggest nuclear plants. Greenpeace’s Shawn Burke said that “over the last couple of weeks it has started to emerge that a number of nuclear reactors in Japan had serious problems related to corrosion.” Following an emergency press conference tonight in Tokyo, the president of Japans largest electrical company, Tokyo electric, announced their plutonium programme would be indefinitely postponed. According to Shawn Burke, “the reason for this is that it has been revealed that Tokyo electric and the government have been covering up vital safety inspections over a number of years for the reactors, including reactors licensed to use plutonium mox.” Tokyo electric is BNFL’s 2nd largest Japanese client. They had hoped that Tokyo electric and other bigger Japanese clients would be signing contracts for hundreds of tonnes of mox fuel. “They will put a brave face on it,” says Shawn, but “they know it is catastrophic for future operations at Sellafield.”