The important article below was written based on [reacted] documents I secured from the UK nuclear regulator, the Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) after an eight month battle to ensure disclosure, that began last August (2019)
Westminster bid to
re-launch toxic plutonium reactors
The UK
government is trying to resurrect plutonium-powered reactors despite abandoning
a multi-billion bid to make them work in Scotland.
Documents released by the UK Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR)
under freedom of information law reveal that fast reactors, which can burn and
breed plutonium, are among “advanced nuclear technologies” being backed by UK
ministers.
Two experimental fast reactors were
built and tested at a cost of £4 billion over four decades at Dounreay
in Caithness. But the programme was closed in 1994 as uneconomic after a series
of accidents and leaks.
Campaigners have condemned the
moves to rehabilitate plutonium as a nuclear fuel as “astronomically
expensive”, “disastrous” and “mind-boggling”. They point out that it can be
made into nuclear bombs and is highly toxic – and the UK has 140 tonnes of it.
But the nuclear industry says that
plutonium-fuelled fast reactors can produce “safe, low-carbon power”. UK
government nuclear scientists support the idea, arguing that plutonium reactors
can “minimise waste volumes”.
ONR released 23 documents about
advanced nuclear technologies in response to a freedom of information request
by Dr David Lowry,
a London-based research fellow at the US Institute for
Resource and Security Studies. They include redacted minutes and
notes of meetings from 2019 discussing fast reactors, and are being published
by The Ferret.
NNL completed a “fast reactor
knowledge capture” project in January 2019, including “a series of reports on
Dounreay Fast Reactor and Prototype Fast Reactor for BEIS”. The whole archive
is said to contain “around 40,000 documents”.
But when ONR asked to access the
documents, it was told there were problems. “NNL explained that there may be
some challenges associated with accessing some of these documents due to
historic security classifications and export controls,” the ONR note said.
In September 2019 ONR talked to the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission
in the US about regulating fast reactors, which can be cooled by sodium. ONR asked about the risks of containment being breached by
“sodium fires”.
The commission responded by talking
about its “risk informed approach to determine internal hazards such as a fire
scenario”. Further details, however, have been blacked out.
In May 2019 ONR met with the Environment Agency, which covers England. One of the items discussed was a proposal “to develop an international
benchmark for severe accident analysis for lead fast reactors”.
In another meeting with the agency
in November 2019 it was mentioned that BEIS had given ONR £353,000 to continue work on
advanced nuclear technologies. ONR also had a telephone conference with the Environment Agency in November
2019 which discussed “potential showstoppers” on radioactive waste disposal.
As well as helping ONR increase its
understanding of fast reactors, BEIS has promised investments of up to £44
million to help nuclear companies research and develop a range of new small,
new “modular”reactors.
In November 2019 BEIS also announced an £18 million grant to a consortium led by reactor
manufacturer, Rolls Royce, to develop a “small modular reactor designed and
manufactured in the UK capable of producing cost effective electricity”.
According to Dr Lowry, fast
reactors would require building a plutonium fuel fabrication plant. Such plants
are “astronomically expensive” and have proved “technical and financial
disasters” in the past, he said.
“Any such fabrication plant would
be an inevitable target for terrorists wanting to create spectacular
iconic disruption of such a high profile plutonium plant, with devastating
human health and environmental hazards.”
Lowry was originally told by ONR
that it held no documents on advanced nuclear technologies. As well as
redacting the 23 documents that have now been released, the nuclear safety
regulator is withholding a further 13 documents as commercially confidential –
a claim that Lowry dismissed as “fatuous nonsense”.
I remain perpetually gobsmacked at the
lobbying power of the nuclear obsessives. Walt Patterson,
nuclear critic
The veteran nuclear critic and
respected author, Walt Patterson,
argued that no fast reactor programme in the world had worked since the 1950s.
Even if it did, it would take “centuries” to burn the UK’s 140 tonne plutonium
stockpile, and create more radioactive waste with nowhere to go, he said.
“Extraordinary – they never learn,
do they? I remain perpetually gobsmacked at the lobbying power of the nuclear
obsessives,” he told The Ferret. “The mind continue to boggle.”
The Edinburgh-based nuclear
consultant, Pete Roche,
suggested that renewable energy was the cheapest and most sustainable solution
to climate change. “The UK government seems to be planning some kind of low
carbon dystopia with nuclear reactors getting smaller, some of which at least
will be fuelled by plutonium,” he said.
“The idea of weapons-useable
plutonium fuel being transported on our roads should send shivers down the
spine of security experts and emergency planners.”
Another nuclear expert and critic, Dr Ian Fairlie, described BEIS’s renewed interest in fast
reactors as problematic. “Experience with them over many years in the US,
Russia, France and the UK has shown them to be disastrous and a waste of
taxpayers’ money,” he said.
This is not the view taken by the UK Nuclear Industry Association,
which brings together nuclear companies. It wants to see the UK’s plutonium
being used in reactors rather than disposed of as waste.
“Fast reactor development is about
producing safe, reliable, low carbon power,” said the association’s head of
communications, Hartley Butler George.
“They can be used to close the fuel
cycle, by recycling its spent fuel and minimising waste volumes. They will
produce exactly the type of clean, safe and reliable electricity which we
sorely need to meet climate change targets.”
Asked whether new reactors could
breed as well as burn plutonium, Butler George added: “This depends on the kind
of fast reactor in which the plutonium is used. Some designs focus on a closed
fuel cycle, which creates waste with a much shorter half-life, meaning it is
safer sooner.”
The UK government’s National Nuclear Laboratory
thought ministers were right to investigate advanced nuclear technologies as a
way of help to cut climate pollution. “The rationale for fast reactor
development is certainly about producing safe, reliable, low-carbon power,” said
a laboratory spokesperson.
“Fast reactor designs have the
potential to utilise plutonium as a fuel. They can also be used to close the
fuel cycle, by recycling its spent fuel and minimising waste volumes.”
The Office for Nuclear Regulation confirmed that it had been
funded by the UK government along with the Environment Agency “to further
develop the capability and capacity of the nuclear regulators to regulate the
development of advanced nuclear technologies.”
An ONR spokesperson said: “Any
proposed reactor design would need to meet the UK’s high standards for safety,
security and environmental protection.
“Using the government funding, we
continue to resource and enhance ONR’s corporate and technical knowledge of
advanced nuclear technologies to ensure expertise is gained and retained in the
long-term so we can regulate effectively in the future, if we are required to
do so.”
The Scottish Government has frequently
insisted that it is against building new nuclear stations in
Scotland. But in 2017 it added a rider, saying that its policy was “opposition to new
nuclear stations, under current technologies”.
Critics point out that this could
leave the door open to advanced nuclear technologies such as plutonium-burning
fast reactors. When asked whether this was the case, the government didn’t
directly respond.
“The Scottish Government remains
opposed to new nuclear power plants in Scotland,” a spokesperson told The
Ferret. “The Scottish Government believes our long term energy needs can be met
without the need for new nuclear capacity.”
The
plutonium experiment started at Dounreay
Plutonium
is created when uranium is burnt in nuclear reactors. It is highly toxic and
can be used to make nuclear bombs, or to fuel reactors to generate power.
Plutonium has been extracted from
UK and other reactors since the 1950s. Some 140 tonnes of it is now stored in
high security vaults at the Sellafield nuclear complex in Cumbria, awaiting decisions on
its fate.
An article by three German
scientists in the international Bulletin of Atomic Scientists on 17 April, pointed out that
the store will cost UK taxpayers £73 million every year for the next century.
The plutonium is “highly toxic and poses a permanent risk of proliferation,”
they said.
“It is enough material to build
tens of thousands of nuclear weapons…But after decades of public and
private consultation, there is still no accepted plan for its disposition.”
The plutonium store
at Sellafield
Photo
thanks to Nuclear Decommissioning Authority
Fast reactors were then seen as the
holy grail of nuclear power, because their potential for breeding as well as
burning plutonium could hugely increase the amount of power that could be
extracted from finite uranium resources. But forty years on perceptions
changed.
After building and running a small
Dounreay Fast Reactor from 1959 to 1977 and a larger Prototype Fast Reactor
from 1974 to 1994, the £4 billion programme was cancelled. The technology, and
the economics, had proved more difficult than expected.
There had also been a series of
accidents and leaks – including an explosion in a waste shaft – which were often initially
covered up. The shoreline and the sea near Dounreay have been contaminated by
tens of thousands of radioactive particles that escaped from the plant
between 1963 and 1984 – and which will never be completely cleaned up.
Today the array of old reactors and
waste facilities at Dounreay are being decommissioned. The task was originally
expected to cost £4 billion, but is now reckoned by the UK government’s Nuclear Decommissioning Authority to amount to £2.8 billion,
with the aim of finishing in the 2030s.
A spokesperson for Dounreay
said: “We keep decommissioning plans under constant review to reflect
developments with such a unique and complex programme and to take account of
opportunities, including advancing technology and best practice from around the
world.”
According to the Nuclear
Decommissioning Authority, a decision on what to do with the UK’s plutonium in
the long term was a matter for government. “Until a decision is made, the
continued safe storage of the material is our priority,” said an authority
spokesperson.
23 documents on advanced nuclear
23-documents-on-advanced-nuclear-technologies-released-by-the-office-for-nuclear-regulationPhotos
of Dounreay thanks to iStock/SteveAllenPhoto and iStock/deemac1. This story was published in tandem with the Sunday National.
