Scottish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament

Plutonium Shipments Stopped

Details

Published on Tuesday, 05 August 2008 14:46

Top-secret shipments of weapons-ready plutonium through British waters have been stopped, after their exposure by the Independent on Sunday. The Department for Transport (DfT) said that it had taken "regulatory action" to prohibit the shipments from Sellafield to Normandy on an unarmed old roll-on, roll-off ferry, with few safety or security features. The prohibition, the first of its kind, was imposed after complaints by the French nuclear safety authorities.

The shipments – denounced by nuclear weapons experts as "madness" and "totally irresponsible" – were carrying hundreds of kilograms of plutonium-dioxide powder, described as the ideal material for terrorists seeking to create a nuclear explosion or make a dirty bomb. Only 10kg of the plutonium, experts claim, would be needed to make a terrorist atomic weapon.

John Large, an independent nuclear expert, called it "the most dangerous and worst possible material you could ship". The first shipment – in the converted ferry Atlantic Osprey – was about to leave Cumbria for a French nuclear complex at Cap la Hague in March, when the plan was exposed in The IoS.

Taxpayers Pick Up the Tab at Sellafield

Details

Published on Tuesday, 05 August 2008 14:31

The consortium with a £20bn contract to clean up Britain's Sellafield nuclear plant has been handed a blank cheque by the Government to pay for future accidents there.

The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority wants the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform to grant indemnity to Nuclear Management Partners Ltd.—the consortium that won PBO status in the Sellafield contract—against uninsurable claims arising from a nuclear incident that fall outside the protections offered by the Nuclear Installations Act and the Paris/Brussels Conventions.

“It would not be viable for any of the bidders to proceed without an indemnity because any fee earning benefits of the contract would be overwhelmed by the potential liabilities,” Energy Minister Malcolm Wicks informed the House of Commons..

Plans for £110m Waste Dump at Dounreay

Details

Published on Tuesday, 05 August 2008 14:25

Communities to be Bribed To Take Nuclear Waste

Details

Published on Tuesday, 17 June 2008 14:34

The UK Government has offered to pay communities to provide burial sites for waste, and made clear that it would press ahead with plans to build new nuclear power stations. Areas of the UK which offer sites will become involved in a "multi-billion-pound" project which will bring benefits such as hundreds of new, skilled jobs, Ministers said.

Environment Secretary Hilary Benn, MP for Leeds Central, said: "Construction and operation of a geological disposal facility will be a multi-billion-pound high-technology project that will provide skilled employment for hundreds of people over many decades. It will contribute greatly to the local economy and wider socio-economic framework."

But critics accused the Government of offering "bribes" for taking waste which will remain radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years. Greenpeace's nuclear campaigner Nathan Argent said: "Nuclear waste is a financial and geological nightmare. There is no plausible solution for our existing legacy waste, let alone the waste from new reactors, which will be at least three times more radioactive.

"This is not about finding a solution for nuclear waste. It's about bribing a community with £1bn of taxpayers' money to bury waste in their back garden. But there's no guarantee a willing community will come forward or that they'll be able to find a geologically suitable site anywhere in this country."

Nuclear Decommissioining Costs Spiral

Details

Published on Tuesday, 03 June 2008 14:27

 The cost of decommissioning nuclear power stations is “spiralling out of control” after an official admission that an estimate of £73billion was set to rise. The figure, published in January, was an increase of £12billion on the previous estimate made in 2003, but a senior official at the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority said that he believed the cost would continue to escalate.

Director Jim Morse said: “I think itÂ’s a high probability that in the short term it will undoubtedly go up. We've still a lot to discover. We haven't started waste retrieval in those parts of the estate where the degradation and radioactive decay has been at its greatest." 

He estimated that the extra cost would run into billions but admitted that he could not be sure how much the total would be. "No-one's done this before," he added. Â”

Friends of the Earth nuclear campaigner Neil Crumpton said: “Nuclear and fossil fuel power generation pose an enormous threat to the environment – and their cost to the economy is spiralling out of control.

“The UK Government must come forward with a comprehensive programme of action to cut energy waste and exploit the UK’s considerable potential for generating renewable power from wind, waves and the sun.

“The Government must seize the opportunity to make the UK a world leader in developing a low-carbon, nuclear-free economy – and create a safer and cleaner future for us all.”

New Nuclear Power Plant Costs Underestimated

Details

Published on Tuesday, 13 May 2008 14:15

The Government has vastly underestimated the cost of building a new generation of nuclear power plants, according to the head of the world's largest power company.  Wulf Bernotat, chairman and chief executive of E.ON, the German energy giant that owns Powergen,  thinks the cost per plant could be as high as €6 billion (£4.8 billion) - nearly double the Government's latest £2.8 billion estimate.

His figures indicate that the cost of replacing Britain's ten nuclear power stations could reach £48 billion, excluding the cost of decommissioning ageing reactors or dealing with nuclear waste. “We are talking easily about €5 billion to €6 billion [each],” Dr Bernotat said.

E.ON's cost estimates provoked an angry response from anti-nuclear campaigners. Tim Jackson, of the Sustainable Development Commission, said: “Combined with the myriad concerns about the legacy of nuclear waste, it should now be clear that a new generation of nuclear plants is the wrong option.”

Dr Bernotat's estimates are based on E.ON's experience as a partner in the construction of a nuclear plant in Finland to a French design viewed as the most likely for deployment in Britain. He estimated the cost of that project at €4.5 billion.

The Department of Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform said the £2.8 billion figure, contained in a White Paper published in January, was an estimate and that the final costs would hinge on many factors. 

Dounreay Stockpile Details Withheld

Details

Published on Tuesday, 06 May 2008 14:37

Defects Found in French Nuclear Reactors

Details

Published on Tuesday, 15 April 2008 15:47

The French nuclear safety agency has uncovered a series of defects in the construction of a reactor in Normandy considered to be the template for the next generation of stations due to be built in Britain.

The agency, ASN, says that a quarter of the welds seen in its steel liner – a crucial line of defence if there were to be an accident – are not in accordance with welding norms, and that cracks have been found it its concrete base, also essential for containing radioactivity.

The reports – in a series of letters covering inspections made between December and last month – will cause particular concern because similar defects have been listed in a previous report by the Finnish safety authority into the only other reactor of its type being built anywhere in the world.

The earlier report helped put the Finnish reactor, on the island of Olkiluoto in the Gulf of Bothnia, two years behind schedule, three years after construction began. It is also believed to have helped increase its cost by more than 50 per cent. Similar delays and cost overruns here would play havoc with the Government's nuclear programme, and could even lead to it being abandoned.

Dounreay In Another Cover -Up

Details

Published on Tuesday, 12 February 2008 14:21