They make a desert and call it peace.
Tactitus
Sizewell A joined Bradwell on New Years Eve in the decommissioning process of their ancient magnox reactors. Bradwell has now concluded the removal of its dangerously radioactive used fuel rods and sent them all to bother the folk around Sellafield instead, and Sizewell will start removing its own rods, to send them through London, Birmingham and the Manchester area from March onwards, or whenever the necessary railway flasks can be made available.
That such vital equipment may be in short supply underscores a major problem that has hit the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA), the body given £76 billion of our money to dispose safely of all radioactive waste. Its financial viability relies upon the huge income that it is supposed to receive from generating electricity and from reprocessing nuclear materials at its THORP factory in Cumbria. With THORP out of action for years (as well as earning a £2 million fine from a careless accident) and with so many of the UK’s reactors off-stream through faults, the NDA is £200 million short on funds this year and facing up to 3000 job losses.
The NDA and its problems are state-owned ones, but the privately owned part of the nuclear industry is facing similar money troubles. British Energy, Sizewell B’s owner, has suffered such big losses from outages at its other reactors at Hunterston B, Hinkley B and Heysham that its shares have been wobbling. Only four years ago the public had to bail out British Energy to save it from collapsing. Yet the arrogant, self-congratulatory bragging of the Sizewell management continues at every Sizewell Stakeholder Group meeting.
We must hope that safety does not become a casualty from these problems, but an accident at Sizewell A - only seven days after it finally shut down - is not encouraging. 40,000 gallons of radioactive water leaked from a broken pipe connected to its cooling ponds, and the station did not even bother to alert a group of local anglers on the beach in front of the station. Initially the station said that no radioactivity had escaped from the station, but subsequent reports revealed that a quarter of the water had gone into the sea. We have long known that casual visitors to Sizewell are warned less of the nuclear dangers than against dog-fouling and not paying for parking their cars, but it seems an own goal for the station to antagonise its own locals.
Meanwhile, another august body supposed to look after you and me is being corrupted by government. The Health and Safety Executive, under pressure from the Department of Trade and Industry, has published guidance on how it will assess generic designs for any new nuclear power stations in the UK, in order to help to “pre-license” such untested, never-built reactors. This is a dodge to short-cut planning requirements, which were designed to safeguard public interests and to give us a say in whether we want to things or not.
Peter Lanyon ( www.shutdown-sizewell.org.uk ) 01603 722898
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