from Sunday Herald, 05 February 2012
A £3.2 million project that could have led to Hunterston in North Ayrshire becoming a nuclear waste dump for the rest of Scotland has been abandoned in the wake of protests by local residents and environmentalists.
Investigations into a plan to bury large amounts of radioactive graphite underground on the site have been suspended by the UK government’s Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA). Instead, the graphite waste will be stored in a huge engineered shed recently built at Hunterston.
Critics had feared that burying the graphite would have freed up space in the shed for waste from other nuclear sites across the country. They have welcomed the decision to drop the graphite burial project.
“I am glad that the radioactive waste will be going into the store where it is retrievable,” said Rita Holmes, who represents Fairlie Community Council on Hunterston’s stakeholder group.
“This is better than putting it into an untried and untested engineered hole adjacent to our coastline where retrievability and one hundred per cent containment would be uncertain.”
But she warned that there was still a need to be “vigilant” about the Hunterston shed being used to house waste from elsewhere in the future. “Our message, loud and clear, is that we do not want waste from other sites outwith the Hunterston peninsula,” she said.
The graphite, in the form of “sleeves,” comes from two old Magnox reactors that are being dismantled at Hunterston. On an adjacent site there are two newer reactors that are still generating electricity for consumers.
The NDA funded a “Pathfinder Project” to investigate the feasibility of burying the graphite sleeves in a hole up to 50 metres deep. But stakeholders were told at their last meeting that this had been suspended because there was “no compelling economic case” for continuing.
The NDA’s spokesman, Bill Hamilton, stressed that it had been a good project, and it had shown that an underground store was feasible. But the risks of delays and rising costs - that would have to be met by taxpayers - forced its suspension.
“We are keen to crack on, and in terms of costs and timescale there was no compelling need to turn away from using the existing waste store,” he told the Sunday Herald. He insisted that the project had not been a waste of money.
“The work done will help inform the ongoing programme to examine innovative ways of managing the many tonnes of graphite that surround the Magnox reactor cores,” Hamilton said.
Pete Roche, a nuclear consultant in Edinburgh, described as “misconceived” the idea that nuclear waste could somehow be safely disposed of underground. “Radioactive substances will eventually leak out - we can't wish them away,” he said.
“Hunterston should stick with the Scottish government's priority of storing waste where it can be constantly monitored and repackaged if necessary.” He pointed out that the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa) had warned of the potential dangers of coastal erosion and rising sea levels at the site due to global warming.
In a submission last year Sepa said: “Of particular concern is the undue reliance that the performance of the disposal system places on the inundation of the site due to a combination of coastal erosion and sea level rise, which have large associated uncertainties.”
Added Roche: “The proposed dump failed to meet one of the first environmental principles for good radioactive waste management - that waste should be concentrated and contained - not diluted and dispersed into the environment.”
Read an earlier story about the Hunterston waste plan here.
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