24 February 2014
The government’s nuclear safety watchdog is threatening to crack down on the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) at Aldermaston for failing to make 1,000 drums of its most dangerous radioactive waste safe.
The Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) is considering enforcement action against AWE, which designs and makes Britain’s nuclear bombs at its site in Berkshire, because it missed a legally-binding deadline set seven years ago. The action could range from a formal warning letter to a prosecution and a fine.
ONR issued a licence instrument in March 2007 ordering AWE to repackage and reduce the volume of “higher activity” wastes by February 2014. According to ONR, the aim was to ensure that 1,000 drums of the “hazardous material” ended up being stored in “a passively safe form”.
“The licence instrument has now expired without its requirements being met,” said a statement posted online by ONR. “ONR will investigate the licensee’s failure to meet the requirements of the licence instrument and will consider enforcement action.”
ONR described the current storage of the wastes as “acceptable in the short term”, but made clear that it was concerned about their medium and long term management. The wastes will have to be stored above ground for at least the next 50 years while the government tries to find a site for an underground repository.
AWE said that it had decided in 2011 that the plan to repackage the waste “was unlikely to be the best overall solution”. It informed ONR then that it was going to breach the terms of the licence instrument.
“Since then, AWE has remained in dialogue with the ONR and worked closely with the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, and other organisations that hold nuclear site licences similar to ours, to find an appropriate long term solution,” said AWE’s head of corporate communications, Fiona Rogers.
“AWE remains committed to managing our waste in a safe and compliant manner,” she told Aldermaston’s local liaison committee in a circular on 21 February. “We will continue to work on finding an acceptable solution that meets this licence instrument requirement.”
Rogers stressed that the way in which the waste was currently stored “does not give rise to significant risk to the public or the AWE workforce.” But this has not prevented Aldermaston from coming under fire from its critics.
“AWE's boffins have acted like spoilt kids who want to play with their toys but don't want to tidy up the mess they've made,” said Pete Wilkinson, director of Nuclear Information Service.
AWE should be hit with a heavy fine, he argued. “The company is more interested in its new build programme than on spending money to deal with the radioactive legacy it has left behind.”
AWE is already under an enforcement notice from ONR keeping a top-secret Aldermaston plant that makes enriched uranium components for nuclear warheads and fuel for nuclear submarines closed because of corrosion in structural steelwork. In December the deadline for repairing the problem was extended by 17 months to the end of May 2015.
Earlier this month Aldermaston was shortlisted by the Ministry of Defence as one of five possible sites for storing radioactive wastes from the dismantling of Britain’s defunct nuclear submarines. The other sites are AWE’s sister site at Burghfield in Berkshire, Sellafield in Cumbria, Capenhurst in Cheshire and Chapelcross in Dumfries and Galloway.
This story has also been covered by the BBC and the Nuclear Information Service.
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