By Steve Painter
While nuclear energy accounts for an increasing amount of power generation in Europe — up from 2% to 35% in the past 20 years just in the European Community — the industry continues to be plagued by serious problems.
Bulgaria is probably paying the highest price for past decisions to rely on nuclear energy. Enforced shutdowns of two reactors for safety reasons at the Kozloduy plant have deprived the country of 40% of its generating capacity, causing widespread blackouts and power shortages for all of this year. Already on the verge of bankruptcy, the country is facing the prospect of having to replace a huge part of its generating capacity.
In north Wales, it has just been revealed that a power station shut down in February had been leaking radiation into a nearby lake. A confidential report on the Trawsfynydd power station, completed three years ago but not made public, revealed that radioactivity in the lake was higher than anywhere else in Britain except Sellafield, site of Britain's main nuclear installations.
No date has been announced for the reopening of the station, apparently because of radioactive weakening of its structure.
An International Atomic Energy Agency confidential report has also become public, this one revealing that plutonium is being airlifted out of Britain in old containers that have not been adequately tested.
The British government and British Nuclear Fuels have ignored IAEA proposals that use of these containers be suspended pending tests to produce safer containers.
Also in Britain, moves are under way that will considerably reduce nuclear safety standards. UK Nirex, the state-run company dealing with nuclear waste disposal, has announced that it will build an underground repository at Sellafield, possibly outside the site of existing nuclear facilities. Waste disposal is one sector of the British power generation system that has not been privatised, because it is not profitable.
A report for Greenpeace by geologist Philip Richardson says the decision was taken on the grossly inadequate basis of two borehole tests. Richardson says the behaviour of different types of nuclear waste is so different it might "never be possible" to accurately model a safe geological situation for a dump site, and no-one really knows whether Sellafield is a safe site.
A 1980 survey classed Sellafield as unsuitable for a dump, but Nirex is now saying the area is "better than anticipated". The Sellafield nuclear installations are the source of about half of Britain's nuclear waste, and transporting this to the alternative site at Dounreay in Scotland would add massively to costs.
It is believed political considerations played a large part in the choice of Sellafield, as there is an active pro-nuclear lobby based on those whose livelihoods depend on the installations. On the other hand, a council referendum at Dounreay recorded a 74% vote against a nuclear dump in that area.
Sellafield's private, and profitable, reprocessing of spent power station fuel produces large amounts of low-level waste, because it contaminates machinery, clothing and chemicals. Reprocessing has been carried out since the '50s, and next year BNFL will open a new reprocessing plant, THORP, to replace the facilities that are up to 40 years old.
This, in turn, will attract greater quantities of spent fuel from around the British isles and internationally. Around 60% of Britain's spent fuel imports already arrive at a BNFL private berth at Barrow, Cumbria, aboard specially constructed ships owned by BNFL subsidiary Pacific Nuclear Transport. Barrow has specialist facilities for dealing with nuclear accidents.
However, a report by consultants John Large and Associates predicts a large rise in spent-fuel flasks passing through Dover for transportation by rail to Sellafield. These flasks arrive aboard roll-on roll-off ships, including passenger ferries, many of which have safety deficiencies. They arrive with no advance notice that they are carrying nuclear materials at ports with no specialist facilities for dealing with nuclear accidents.
The flasks are then committed to Britain's decaying rail network for transportation through such large population centres as London, Birmingham and Leeds. n