News Archive – January 2006

Scotland should kill off nuke plans

Proposals for new nuclear power stations should now be "killed off" say Friends of the Earth Scotland after the publication of the draft conclusions of the Committee on Radioactive Waste Management (CoRWM) which says that its report, due July 2006, will "not solve" the nuclear waste problem.

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Only eight per cent of nuclear waste safely packaged

Britain's failure to deal with more than 50 years of nuclear waste is a “national disgrace”, according to the head of the body that advises the Government on how to dispose of it. By 2005 we had safely packaged only 8 per cent of our radioactive waste stockpile.
Chris Murray, chief executive of Nirex, said that a long-term solution to the safe storage of waste was needed urgently if the country was to avoid passing on a dangerous environmental legacy to a new generation. His comments come on the day that Nirex publishes its three-yearly inventory of Britain’s nuclear waste and less than a week before a government energy review that is expected to flag up fresh interest in nuclear power. “By 2005 we had safely packaged only 8 per cent of a legacy of radioactive waste that goes back to the Second World War. That is a national disgrace. It is appalling,” Mr Murray said.

Times 19th January 2006

 

Hunterston waste fiasco

Investigations have been launched into the risks to public health and safety posed by secret radioactive waste dumps on the North Ayrshire coast. Thousands of cubic metres of contaminated rubbish from Hunterston nuclear power station have been dumped in five shoreline pits accessible to the public. Yet official records of what the pits contain have been destroyed.

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Energy review kicks off

On 23 January the Secretary of State and the Minister for Energy launched the consultation document Our Energy Challenge: securing clean, affordable energy for the long term. There will be a 12 week consultation period.

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Nuclear power cannot tackle climate change

New nuclear power stations would do little to combat climate change, according to a leading expert who has hit out at what he calls the "abysmal" standard of debate on the issue in the UK.

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One NorthEast backs down on nukes

Plans by the North-East England regional development agency, One North East, to commission a £50,000 business case for a new nuclear site in the area have had to be scrapped after a storm of protest.

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Nirex “sexed up” report on deep disposal

Nuclear waste agency, Nirex, has been accused of sexing up a report on nuclear waste disposal by the Environment Agency.

The Agency says "Nirex present an overly optimistic view." Nirex, which claims to have learned the lessons of the expensive collapse of research into a possible underground store in the 1990s, has presented arguments in which, the agency says: "The positive arguments are given prominence and corresponding negative arguments are not examined."

Chief among the concerns is that the proposed concrete and steel containers used to bury waste could leak within 500 years.

“There is good reason to doubt that the packages will last for the target 500 years” Nirex's plans are "not sufficiently underpinned technically" the agency says. "We are concerned that there appears to be insufficient justification for assuming that packages will last for a target period of 500 years."

However, the agency concludes that deep geological disposal is still "viable" and could end up being granted a safety licence "provided a publicly and technically suitable site were available".

New Scientist 7th January 2006
Guardian 11th January 2006

 

New nukes could mean a five-fold increase in dangerous waste

A new generation of nuclear power stations would increase five-fold the amount of a lethal and long-lasting form of highly radioactive nuclear waste stored in the UK, official figures show. The analysis, by a government-sponsored committee of experts, reveals the scale of the legacy to future generations by building nuclear plants. It comes as the nuclear industry and supporters are pressing ministers to approve reactors in the face of uncertainty over gas supplies.The figures reveal that spent uranium fuel rods from new power stations would almost triple radioactivity in the current inventory of UK nuclear waste. They contrast with claims that new reactors would create far less waste than predecessors. BNFL says a new generation of plants would add only 10% to the volume of waste. Experts say this is misleading because the majority of existing waste is made up of bulky, less hazardous material.

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