UK Nuclear Waste stores 'on verge of exploding'

national | miscellaneous | news report Sunday June 30, 2002 12:52 by Brendan Shine

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2002

In the observer today. Sites all over the UK have medium level waste stored in a dangerous state. http://www.observer.co.uk/politics/story/0,6903,746724,00.html http://www.observer.co.uk/comment/story/0,6903,746079,00.html http://www.defra.gov.uk/rwmac/reports/interwaste/index.htm

Nuclear stores 'on verge of exploding'
http://www.observer.co.uk/politics/story/0,6903,746724,00.html
Mark Townsend
Sunday June 30, 2002
The Observer

Almost 90 per cent of Britain's hazardous nuclear waste stockpile is so
badly stored it could explode or leak with devastating results at any
time.
An alarming government report into Britain's beleaguered nuclear
industry -
obtained by The Observer - reveals that medium-level radioactive waste
with
the equivalent mass to 725 double-decker buses is being stored in a
dangerous state.

The Radioactive Waste Management Advisory Committee found that 88 per
cent
of Britain's intermediate-level nuclear waste had not been treated for
safe
storage at up to 24 UK locations.

Experts last night warned the potentially volatile waste represented a
toxic
time-bomb and warned of a 'disaster waiting to happen'.

A source at Nirex, the firm in charge of disposing of Britain's nuclear
waste, admitted the situation was 'outrageous'.

Peter Roche of Greenpeace said much of the material remained acutely
unstable until it was properly treated. Billions of pounds of
taxpayers'
money will be required to tackle the growing mountain of unstable
nuclear
waste.

The report, received by Environment Secretary Margaret Beckett and
Defence
Secretary Geoff Hoon last week, reveals that volatile material can
spontaneously combust in air, explode on contact with water or leak in
liquid form can be found at nuclear sites across Britain.

It expressed concern that most of the UK's medium-level nuclear
material was
kept in 'ageing' facilities.'The nuclear industry likes to give the
impression that all its waste is safely stored, but the truth of the
matter
is these findings prove there are disasters waiting to happen at
nuclear
sites across the country,' added Roche.

The findings increase fears that nuclear sites are tempting terrorist
targets .'A malicious attack, power failure or a building collapsing
could
have awful consequences for society,' said Roche.

Michael Meacher, Environment Minister, denied the material was unsafe
but
conceded there was a serious problem over waste storage.

'The nuclear industry has to face up to this. It has to be conditioned
before it is stored and there remains no satisfactory agreement on how
this
should be done,' he said.

The medium-level nuclear waste stockpile is spread among the major
nuclear
plants, including Sellafield in Cumbria, Dounreay in Caithness and
Harwell
in Oxfordshire, as well as nuclear power stations and Royal Dockyards
such
as Devonport in Plymouth and Rosyth, Fife.

During their 14-month investigation, officials from the advisory
committee
found 65,208 of Britain's 74,100 cubic metres of medium-level nuclear
waste
had yet to be treated to be stored safely.

A source at Nirex said: 'It's outrageous that most of Britain's nuclear
waste is still not properly conditioned and is lying in its raw state.'

Intermediate-level nuclear waste involves radioactive material taken
from a
nuclear reactor and equipment from the reprocessing of spent nuclear
fuel.

Workers require protective shielding and suits when handling the waste
which
is highly toxic to humans. The report also reveals frustration over
British
Nuclear Fuels handling of the waste crisis.

It says the Government's Nuclear Installations Inspectorate has
resorted to
using its legal powers to force BNFL 'to target areas on the Sellafield
site
where waste management practice or progress has not been acceptable'.

Fred Barker, chairman of the working group that compiled the report,
said:
'It's important to cast a spotlight on what needs to be done on the
level of
untreated waste.'

An announcement on Thursday will confirm BNFL is to be broken up
because it
cannot afford the clean-up costs of the nuclear waste stockpile.
Estimates
place the clean-up bill at £1.8 billion a year for the next 20 years.
The
announcement is also expected to unveil details about the setting up of
a
new Liabilities Management Authority to take over the running of
Sellafield,
Harwell and Dounreay in order to tackle the waste mountain.

Governments have postponed a decision on what to do with medium-level
waste
that has accumulated since Britain began its nuclear programme in the
early
1950s.

Tom Watson, Labour MP for West Bromwich East, said: 'We are now at a
point
when tough decisions on safety have to be made. We can't afford to duck
out
any longer.

'There has to be an independent body whose sole goal is the long-term
management of nuclear waste.'

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2002

Britain's nuclear danger

Britain has no idea of how to deal with dangerous nuclear waste, yet
keeps
producing more of it says a leading Greenpeace activist, explaining why
today's Observer revelations matter

Pete Roche
Sunday June 30, 2002

We already know that British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL) has almost 1600 cubic
metres of extremely dangerous liquid high level waste, which has to be
constantly cooled, stored in tanks at its Sellafield site in Cumbria.
An
accident or malicious act which caused just 50% of the radioactivity to
escape would be equivalent to 44 Chernobyls. We also know that
Sellafield
has a stockpile of around 70 tonnes of weapons-useable plutonium, and
that
this could increase to 150 tonnes over the next decade or so. The House
of
Lords Science and Technology Committee has called for the bulk of this
to be
declared a waste, making a mockery of BNFL's main business which is to
separate plutonium from spent nuclear waste fuel.
Mark Townsend's story now focuses on the problems associated with
Intermediate-Level Waste (ILW), which, although it doesn't generate its
own
heat like high-level waste, is still extremely dangerous, and requires
very
careful stewardship. The current nuclear programme will generate some
215,000 cubic metres of this category of waste, 74,000 cubic metres of
which
are already stored at sites around the UK - more than half at
Sellafield.
Surprisingly 5,000 cubic metres are located in Oxfordshire at Harwell,
2,000
cubic metres at Aldermaston, and the rest spread around the nuclear
station
sites and Royal Dockyards.

What is particularly worrying about the Observer revelations is that
88% of
the ILW is not stored in, what is called a 'safe, passive Form'. In
other
words it is in a dangerous condition. The Government's Radioactive
Waste
Management Advisory Committee, in a classic understatement, call this
'unsatisfactory'. This is a committee made up of pro and anti-nuclear
voices
that has published its findings in a consensus report. So for
'unsatisfactory' read 'outrageous'.

Some 28,000 cubic metres of the waste not stored safely is described by
the
nuclear industry's waste management agency, Nirex, as 'challenging'.
These
are wastes which are difficult to 'immobilise', in other words may
easily
leak out of their packaging; wastes which could spontaneously combust
in
contact with normal air; wastes which are far too heterogeneous or
mixed to
be safely packaged in their current form.

The Nuclear Installations Inspectorate (NII), the Government's nuclear
regulator, reported in 1997 that these wastes may be poorly
'characterised'
- in other words we don't really know what's there; they are
'potentially
mobile' so may leak out into the groundwater or wider environment, and
they
are in a physically and chemically degraded condition, in '40-50 year
old
facilities that fall below current standards and are subject to further
deterioration'. In other words, unknown waste, which could easily leak,
stored in buildings which are falling down.

Since then the NII has become increasingly concerned at the lack of
progress
in addressing the problem, and on several occasions recently it has had
to
resort to using its legal powers to persuade BNFL "to target areas on
the
Sellafield site where waste management practice or progress has not
been
acceptable".

One of the biggest problems seems to be British Nuclear Fuels'
reluctance to
spend money 'characterising' the waste it has built up over the past
five
decades. We have got to know the chemical and physical properties of
the
waste and the radiation content before we can decide how best to
package and
store the waste as safely as possible. The company recently spent £400
million building a plant known as 'Drypac' on the Sellafield site. But
the
plant has still not been commissioned. According to the company 'Drypac
is
taking a breather'. BNFL is having to re-examine the way it deals with
its
ILW before it can open the plant. A source close to the industry told
me
that, BNFL was basically hoping to package its ILW on the cheap,
without
characterizing the waste first. Now it has wasted £400 million on a new
plant, it has realized that the cheap option won't work.

With an announcement about the setting up of a new Liabilities
Management
Authority which will take over the running of Sellafield, Harwell and
Dounreay, expected on Thursday (4th July), we can only hope that the
issue
of putting our nuclear wastes into a form that allows it to be stored
as
safely as possible, will be a top priority, and that there are no
disasters
in the meantime. But one thing is certain, we cannot let this industry
build, yet more nuclear power stations adding to Britain's growing
mountain
of dangerous waste which we have no idea what to do with.

Peter Roche is a anti-nuclear campaigner with Greenpeace UK. You can
write
to him via [email protected].