from Sunday Herald, 28 March 2004
THE European Commission is threatening to take the British government to court for failing to account for hundreds of tonnes of dangerous radioactive waste at the Sellafield nuclear complex.
A confidential EC memo leaked to the Sunday Herald alleges that the state-owned company British Nuclear Fuels Ltd (BNFL) has been breaking European law for years by leaving unknown amounts of mixed-up waste in an open pond at the Cumbrian site. The waste should be properly looked after because some of the plutonium and uranium it contains could be made into nuclear bombs.
Delays and difficulties in solving the problem since it was first raised by the Commission in 1986 are causing “increasing concern”, the leaked memo says. “A further delay in overcoming the continuous infringements cannot be further tolerated.”
The EC executive is expected to decide this week to give the UK until May 1 to come up with a comprehensive plan for retrieving and quantifying the waste. If the deadline is not met, the EC will go to the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg seeking to impose fines on BNFL.
Environmental groups welcomed the EC’s action, arguing that BNFL had to be forced to solve the problem. “To prevent some unthinkable disaster, we need much more urgent action to put waste into a safer form,” said Greenpeace campaigner Pete Roche.
The pond in which the waste is stored is known officially as B30, but nicknamed “dirty thirty” by Sellafield workers. It emits so much radiation that for safety reasons people are only permitted to work near it for less than an hour a day.
The pond was built in 1959 to store and unpack uranium fuel rods burnt in Britain’s first generation of military and civil reactors. The hot fuel was stored under water to keep it cool, and to shield workers from its intense radiation.
After some fuel started corroding in the 1970s, the pond was phased out and eventually closed down in 1992. But it has been left with a huge legacy of nuclear waste under the water, which is slowly leaking into the surrounding air and earth.
According to the leaked memo, the European Commission is “strongly concerned about the situation regarding radioactive contamination of the environment surrounding the pond.”
But it is even more worried about BNFL’s persistent inability to accurately account for the potential bombs-grade material in the pond.
It takes only a few kilograms of plutonium to make an explosion capable of wiping out a city.
BNFL has told the EC that the pond might contain about 1.3 tonnes of plutonium, 400 kilograms of which is lying on the bottom in a sludge. A significant amount of strategically important nuclear material is not properly accounted for,” says the leaked memo.
Another confidential document from BNFL, revealed by the Sunday Herald last July, suggests there is somewhere between 300 and 450 tonnes of uranium metal in the pond. It is impossible to be sure of the amounts because much has corroded and spilt over the years, and the water is impenetrably murky.
The pond was first inspected by the EC’s nuclear watchdog, Euratom, in 1986, and has been visited by inspectors every year since 1991.
After every inspection, BNFL was informed that the storage of waste in the pond was “unsatisfactory”.
Now the EC seems to have run out of patience. “Measures have to be taken to terminate this clear infringement of essential Euratom safeguard requirements,” the EC memo concludes.
It includes a draft EC directive alleging that BNFL is in breach of articles 79 and 81 of the Euratom Treaty. The company is accused of a “continuous failure” to keep proper records of the nuclear material and to give EC inspectors access to it.
The directive gives the UK government until 1 May 2004 to come up with a “comprehensive plan” for removing the waste from the pond and quantifying it. Otherwise the EC will proceed “by imposing sanctions on BNFL proportionate to the severity of the infringements,” the leaked memo says.
Environmentalists pointed out that most of the radioactive pollution around the Scottish coast comes from Sellafield.
“Forcing BNFL to put its house in order is good news whether you live north or south of the Border,” said Fred Edwards, the spokesman for a coalition of 26 Scottish environmental groups.
On Tuesday the coalition, under the banner of the “everyone campaign”, is planning to launch its bid to influence the elections to the European parliament in June.
“This case neatly highlights the role Europe can take in advancing environmental protection and public safety here in the UK,” claimed Edwards.
BNFL declined to comment on the matter and referred all inquiries to the government’s Department of Trade and Industry in London.
“We’ve not received anything official from the European Commission, so it would be premature to comment,” said the department’s spokes woman yesterday.
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