Rob Edwards

Revealed: the 1,700 problems plaguing nuclear plants

from The Observer, 21 June 2009

Britain’s ageing nuclear power and weapons plants have been plagued by more than 1,700 leaks, breakdowns and other mishaps over the past seven years, according to a secret report by the government’s chief nuclear inspector, Mike Weightman.

The report, released under freedom of information legislation, reveals the catalogue of incidents and accidents that have confronted the UK safety watchdog, the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate (NII), as it struggles to cope with a growing workload and a severely depleted staff.

The NII faces “major challenges” in ensuring that old nuclear plants are run or dismantled safely at the same time as checking that new plants are safe to build, Weightman says. There are problems “across all areas of existing nuclear plant”, including Sellafield in Cumbria, Aldermaston and Burghfield in Berkshire, and reactors around the country.

With relatively fewer inspectors than any other nuclear-powered country in the world, the NII has to police the safety of 39 nuclear sites across the UK, some of them dating back more than half a century. It is also having to assess foreign reactor designs proposed as part of the government’s new nuclear power programme.

In January this year, Weightman put a 37-page report to the board of the NII’s governing body, the Health and Safety Executive. Marked “restricted”, it lays bare the crisis that is afflicting the regulation of the British nuclear industry.

Chernobyl still contaminating Scottish sheep

for Sunday Herald, 26 April 2009

It exploded 23 years ago today more than 1,400 miles away, but it is still contaminating sheep in Scotland.

The Chernobyl nuclear reactor near Kiev in Ukraine spewed a huge cloud of radioactivity over Europe, after it overheated and ripped apart on 26 April 1986 because of errors made by control room staff. It was the world’s worst nuclear accident.

Now, according to the government’s Food Standards Agency (FSA), some 3,000 sheep are still subject to restrictions because they remain contaminated by Chernobyl in breach of the safety limit. They are at five farms covering about 7,000 hectares in Stirling and Ayrshire.

Peat and grass in upland areas were polluted with radioactive caesium-137 released by the accident and brought to ground by rain. This is eaten by sheep and has persisted much longer than originally anticipated.

New tidal machines could replace nuclear power

from Sunday Herald, 19 April 2009

A unique tidal power machine being developed at Strathclyde University could produce enough electricity to replace both of Scotland’s ageing nuclear power stations.

Researchers say that 2,000 underwater turbines tethered to the seabed around the west and north coasts could generate a massive two gigawatts of power. That is more than enough to supply all Scotland’s base load electricity, and supplant power from the reactors at Hunterston in North Ayrshire and Torness in East Lothian.

With the right incentives a series of large tidal turbine farms could be in operation around the Scottish coast by the 2020s, researchers argue, enabling Hunterston and Torness to be closed down without power blackouts.

'Neglect' at nuclear clean-up sites

from Sunday Herald, 12 April 2009

It’s one of the world’s dirtiest jobs and it’s going to cost at least £70 billion - and it’s already going wrong.

The mammoth task of cleaning up the radioactive mess created by more than half a century of nuclear power and weapons is running into problems across the UK, according to a report from the government’s nuclear watchdog.

In Scotland, technical cock-ups, maintenance oversights and bureaucratic delays have been dogging the decommissioning of old nuclear plants around the country. They suggest a “worrying pattern of neglect”, say critics.

The new report comes from the nuclear directorate of the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), and summarises regulatory issues at civil and military nuclear plants last year.

At Chapelcross, near Annan in Dumfries and Galloway, the defuelling of a defunct reactor had to be halted after a fuel rod got stuck. A special “stuck element machine” has been built to try and solve the problem.

Nuclear ships are unsafe, says report

from Sunday Herald, 12 April 2009

The growing number of nuclear waste shipments being made through the Irish Sea risk accidents that could cause widespread radioactive contamination, according to an expert report out this week.

The transport ships have “design flaws” which could make them unsafe while the emergency plans in place for coping with an accident are non-existent or inadequate, the report says.

At least 45 movements of nuclear materials have been made north and south through the Irish Sea since 2004. Cargoes of radioactive waste and fuel are transported from the Sellafield nuclear complex in Cumbria to nuclear plants in Japan, the US and Europe.

The report was commissioned by a coalition of more than 70 local authorities in the UK and Ireland worried about nuclear power. It was written by the independent marine pollution consultant, Tim Deere-Jones, and is due to be published in a few days.

Nuclear safety advisors sacked after they warned about risks

from The Guardian, 16 February 2009

An expert advisory committee has been quietly scrapped after it warned that the future safety of Britain’s ageing nuclear plants was being put at risk by poor performance, delays and budget cuts.

The Nuclear Safety Advisory Committee (NuSAC), which has been offering critical advice to Britain’s health and safety watchdog for nearly 50 years, was disbanded without any public announcement.

Former members of NuSAC are now worried about the lack of independent safety advice at a time when the government is embarking on a major expansion and clean-up of nuclear power.

Some former members privately suspect that NuSAC was shut down in October because it could have hampered government plans for a new programme of nuclear reactors. “This was just the time to get rid of a potential pest and spanner in the works of the brave new world of nuclear regulation and build,” said one.

Cool welcome for nuclear spin doctors

15 February 2009

The Labour government and the nuclear industry will this week renew their offensive on the Scottish government’s refusal to allow new reactors north of the border.

The UK’s Minister for Scotland, Jim Murphy, is opening a major international gathering of nuclear spin doctors in Edinburgh tomorrow. He is expected to attack Scottish ministers for their stance.

But the Scottish government, which is not taking part in the conference, has reiterated its opposition to nuclear power. And a Scottish Nationalist MSP has denounced the conference as “hype”.

French nuclear power falters

from The House Magazine, 24 November 2008

If you thought all was rosy with nuclear power in France, think again. Faith in the country’s nuclear competence has been badly shaken by a spate of accidents and by long delays in the construction of a flagship reactor.

In perhaps the most serious accident, nearly a hundred workers were contaminated with radioactive cobalt after an old pipe leaked. It happened on 23 July 2008 at a major nuclear complex at Tricastin, near Avignon in the south of France.

At the same site just over two weeks earlier 75 kilograms of uranium leaked from another broken pipe, contaminating two local rivers. A ban was imposed on fishing and waters sports by the French safety authorities.

British Energy becomes French

from The House Magazine, 24 November 2008

The deal was worth a massive £12.5 billion, and it will change the face of the British nuclear power industry. Depending on your point of view, it will either ensure Britain a bright nuclear future, or prolong its nuclear nightmare.

In September, British Energy, the company that operates most of the UK’s nuclear power stations, agreed a takeover by Electricité de France (EDF). If all goes as planned, Britain’s nuclear electricity business will become the property of the state-owned French company, and the world’s biggest nuclear generator.

Terrorist fire risk at nuclear plant

from Sunday Herald, 21 September 2008

Details of a serious fire hazard at Hunterston nuclear power station in North Ayrshire have been kept secret because they could aid a terrorist attack.

The government’s Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has refused to release information about a “specific fire scenario” at the reactors because to do so could “threaten national security”.

The revelation has prompted calls from environmentalists for the plant to be shut down as soon as possible. But its operator, British Energy, said that it was working to improve safety.

Greenpeace 'risked deaths' in anti-nuclear protest

from Sunday Herald, 17 August 2008

Greenpeace activists protesting against a shipment of nuclear waste on its way to to Sellafield put themselves at risk of death or serious injury, the UK nuclear security chief has warned.

Roger Brunt, the director of the government’s Office for Civil Nuclear Security (OCNS), has accused the international anti-nuclear group of “recklessness” during attempts to board a boat carrying plutonium-contaminated waste from Sweden.

But Greenpeace insisted that its volunteers were “highly trained” and abided by rigorous safety procedures. The dangers they were trying to prevent were far greater than any they might have caused, the organisation argued.

Will nuclear power stop us freezing in the dark?

from The House Magazine, 14 July 2008

The last Prime Minister who attempted to do what Gordon Brown is now trying to do with nuclear power was Margaret Thatcher. Shortly after she took office in 1979, she announced a programme of ten new nuclear reactors.

They were to be built to avoid the risk of people in Britain freezing in the dark, recalled Tom Burke, a former advisor to three UK environment ministers. “Fifteen years later, one reactor had been built at two times its original cost,” he said. “She had been defeated by the economics of nuclear power. No-one froze in the dark.”

Nuclear waste: don't hold your breath

from The House Magazine, 14 July 2008

Three times governments have tried to find a way to dispose of Britain’s nuclear waste - in 1981, 1987 and 1997 - and three times they have failed. Now they are trying again.

In a White Paper published in June, ministers have asked local communities to volunteer to host a repository for radioactive waste accumulated from 55 years of nuclear power and weapons. Despite offering multi-million pound incentives, they are not expecting to be knocked down in the rush.

UK plutonium stocks rise

from New Scientist, 09 July 2008

The UK's stockpile of plutonium from nuclear power stations has risen to 108 tonnes, according to the British government's latest submission to the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, Austria. The stockpile at the end of 2007 exceeded the previous year's total by 1.1 tonnes, and is enough for 13,500 nuclear bombs. Most is stored at Sellafield in Cumbria.

Protest over plan to send nuclear waste to Sweden

from Sunday Herald, 15 June 2008

An unprecedented plan to export radioactive waste from old nuclear submarines in Scotland to Sweden is coming under fire from local authorities worried about accidents and pollution.

The naval dockyard at Rosyth in Fife has applied for permission to ship metal contaminated with radioactivity to a smelter run by the nuclear waste company, Studsvik, near Nyköping in Sweden.

The plan is for the metal, from the decommissioning of seven defunct submarines laid up at Rosyth, to be melted, decontaminated and reused. The contaminated slag will be then sent back to Rosyth to be disposed of at Britain’s low-level radioactive waste dump at Drigg, near Sellafield in Cumbria.

Time to lance Blair's plutonium boil

comment, from The Guardian, 14 May 2008

It must have seemed like a good idea at the time. Take the plutonium produced by nuclear power stations, mix it with uranium and make it into a new fuel for reactors to burn. Call it nuclear recycling, so that it sounds environmentally friendly.

That - or something like it - was the rationale for the former Prime Minister, Tony Blair, to give the go ahead in 2001 to the Sellafield MOX Plant (SMP). Costing an eventual £490 million to build, this was meant to convert Britain’s stockpile of foreign plutonium into a mixed oxide fuel for selling back to foreign customers.

Blair took the decision against the advice of his then environment minister, Michael Meacher and environmental groups. But it was a boost for the flagging nuclear industry and, in retrospect, a foretaste of the government’s current enthusiasm for a new nuclear power programme.

New evidence of child cancer rises near nuclear plants

from Sunday Herald, 04 May 2008

Children living near nuclear plants run a higher risk of getting cancer, according to three major new studies by scientists from Germany and the US.

The studies have re-ignited the decades-old debate over whether radiation leaking from nuclear power and weapons sites increases the incidence of childhood leukaemia in the surrounding area.

Experts say that the new evidence greatly strengthens the case for releasing a detailed breakdown of leukaemia rates amongst children in the south west of Scotland to help find out if they have suffered from nuclear pollution.

Scottish ministers can block nuclear stations

28 April 2008

Any proposal to build a new nuclear power station in Scotland could be blocked by the Scottish government, according to internal documents released today.

A series of emails between civil servants in June 2005 confirms that Scottish ministers have devolved legal powers to reject applications for new power reactors north of the border.

One year on, how green is the SNP?

from Sunday Herald, 27 April 2008

The SNP grew up on oil, is wedded to economic expansion and always wants to put Scotland first. As a political party, it has never developed a coherent theoretical approach to one of the defining issues of the age: the environment.

It comes as some surprise then, that after a year in power, the SNP has won warm plaudits from many environmentalists. There are still major reservations, of course, but most observers outside political parties seem to think that the SNP is doing a better job than its predecessors in government.

Let's take cancer clusters seriously this time

comment, from New Scientist, 26 April 2008

by Ian Fairlie

Among the many environmental concerns surrounding nuclear power plants, there is one that provokes public anxiety like no other: the fear that children living near nuclear facilities face an increased risk of cancer. Though a link has long been suspected, it has never been proven. Now that seems likely to change.