from Sunday Herald, 14 November 2010
Hunterston in North Ayrshire could become the dustbin for Scotland’s nuclear waste under plans being proposed by the US company that is decommissioning Britain’s old reactors.
Energy Solutions, based at Salt Lake City in Utah, wants to bury large amounts of radioactive waste from the defunct nuclear station at Hunterston in a hole up to 50 metres deep on the site. This will free up space in a newly-built shed nearby to take waste from other nuclear sites in Scotland.
Evidence suggests that this could include radioactive waste from nuclear plants at Chapelcross in Dumfries and Galloway and Torness in East Lothian. Debris from the Faslane naval base on the Clyde and the old nuclear submarines berthed at Rosyth on the Forth could also end up at Hunterston.
The prospect appals local residents, experts and environmental groups who say that Hunterston’s new shed should be used for Hunterston’s waste, as was originally planned, and not for waste from elsewhere. Burying waste underground and transporting it across Scotland risk leaks and accidents, they argue.
“I think it’s awful,” said Rita Holmes, who represents Fairlie Community Council on the Hunterston site stakeholder group. “Who wants waste from other people contaminating their environment?”
The waste would pose a threat to human health and the environment, she claimed. “Their intention is to make a major new commercial business out of bringing waste from elsewhere in Scotland.”
The old nuclear station, Hunterston A, is being decommissioned by Magnox North, which is entirely owned by Energy Solutions. The plant is situated on the Firth of Clyde next door to the Hunterston B station, which is still generating electricity.
Magnox North is conducting a feasibility study into burying graphite sleeves stripped from old fuel rods in concrete boxes between 30 and 50 metres deep in sandstone on the Hunterston A site. The graphite waste is currently stored on the site in four old bunkers about which government regulators expressed “serious concern” in 2004.
Peter Roche, a nuclear consultant and former government radiation advisor, warned that the proposed underground dump at Hunterston could be a “guinea pig” for similar dumps in England. “Some of the radioactivity in this waste is particularly mobile and will be around for at least 3 million years,” he pointed out.
According to Duncan McLaren, the chief executive of Friends of the Earth Scotland, there was “a very real risk” that waste from other sites in Scotland would end up in the shed at Hunterston. This would breach the Scottish government’s promise to dispose of nuclear waste near where it was created, he said.
There was a “strong odour of inappropriate corporate influence” in the government’s current consultation on nuclear waste policy, McLaren alleged. Ministers are expected to finalise their policy next month.
Magnox North did not deny that it was contemplating taking waste from other sites. “Potential options” for the shed would need “detailed consideration” by the company and stakeholders in the future, a company spokesman said.
The company insisted that its plans for underground disposal were consistent with “emerging” Scottish government policy. “A disposal facility for graphite wastes would incorporate multiple engineered barriers which will provide a very high level of environmental protection,” the spokesman added.
“Graphite wastes pose a relatively low hazard, due to both the stability of this solid waste form and the nature of the radioactivity.”
A clue to current thinking came in a recent socio-economic study on Hunterston carried out for Magnox North by consultants Hall Aitken. There were "potential synergies between oil and gas, nuclear and military decommissioning", it said.
The Sunday Herald also reported a year ago that Hunterston A was one of several sites identified by the Ministry of Defence as a possible place for storing up to 27 nuclear submarines, 15 of which have already been taken out of service. Seven of the defunct boats are currently moored at Rosyth.
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