Lost - Uranium for 12 bombs (3 Jun 98)

The operators of the Dounreay nuclear plant have admitted that they cannot account for 170 kilograms of Highly Enriched Uranium. This material is assumed to have gone missing from the plant between April 1964 and September 1968.

Dr John McEwan, the Chief Executive of the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority said that this was an "accounting uncertainty". He tried to explain that over this period the plant reproccessed 17 tonnes of HEU and that they had overestimated by 1 per cent the amount of material which was going into the process. He flatly denied that any material was not lost

However his statements contradict the report from his own organisation, the UKAEA, which revealed the missing HEU. The report is an assesment of material which is likely to be in the waste shaft on the site. The authors calculated that 170 kilograms of HEU were unaccounted for from 1964 and 1968 and they also said that it should be assumed that of this around 22 kilograms are likely to be down the shaft.

There is great concern that such a large amount of material can be unaccounted for -

(a) If Dr McEwan is correct then this illustrates how easy it would be for nuclear material to leave a nuclear plant. If their accounting has to allow for a 1 per cent error, then it is possible that HEU could be stolen from the site without anyone knowing.

(b) There has been speculation that the HEU could have ended up in Britain's nuclear weapons programme. Dr McEwan has flatly denied this. Nevertheless in the late 1960s the nuclear power and nuclear weapons programmes were inseparable. In the 1970s the Prototype Fast Breeder reactor was using fuel which had come from the atom bomb factory at Aldermaston. In December 1991 there was an earlier loss of 10 kg of unaccounted for HEU. Dounreay said that they had been reprocessing tonnes of material from Aldermaston at the time this loss occurred.

(c) The most likely explanation is that there is a large amount of this "unaccounted for" HEU within the site at Dounreay. Some of it may be inside part of the plant, some of it down the old waste shaft. It is a very serious hazard which could have led to a criticallity accident in the past and will be a major problem both in the work to empty the old shaft and in decommissioning the plant.

Commenting on this issue Scottish CND said:

"For years the management at Dounreay have hidden their incompetence behind a cloak of secrecy. To lose a few kilograms of Uranium is unfortunate, to lose 170 kilograms is dangerously negligent."

Dounreay