Less rosy milestones in
Thorp’s 25 years
Whitehaven
News, letters, Thursday, 22 August 2013
SIR – Your
report on the Sellafield’s Thorp reprocessing plant’s 25th anniversary (The
Whitehaven News, August 15) contained some omissions.
INSIDE
THORP: A storage pond at Thorp. The reprocessing plant has marked its 25th
anniversary but has not been short of controversy in its time
In May 2005,
it was first reported that a serious leak of highly radioactive nuclear fuel
dissolved in concentrated nitric acid, enough to half fill an Olympic-size
swimming pool, had forced the closure of Thorp.
The highly
dangerous mixture, containing about 22 tonnes of uranium and plutonium fuel, in
liquid form, with a volume of around 83m3, had leaked through a fractured pipe
into a huge stainless steel chamber in the “feed clarification cell”.
The Nuclear
Installations Inspectorate – now the Office for Nuclear Regulation – report on
the accident, issued in December 2005, said that 160kg of plutonium was leaked
(that’s enough to make 20 nuclear weapons).
The NII
investigation identified that the company had been in breach of nuclear site
licence conditions at the Sellafield site.
The
Financial Times reported in May 2005 there was some evidence to suggest that
the pipe may have started to fail in July or August 2004. Failure of the pipe
(at which point significant amounts of liquor started to be released into the
cell) is believed to have occurred in mid-January 2005. However, in the period
between January 2005 (and perhaps earlier) and April 19 2005, opportunities,
such as cell sampling and level measurements, were missed which would have
shown that material was escaping to secondary containment.
Operations
staff at Sellafield then failed to act appropriately to consequent off-normal
conditions, according to Sellafield Ltd’s board of inquiry report, Fractured
Pipe with Loss of Primary Containment in the THORP Feed Clarification Cell,
dated May 26 2005, but released publicly in redacted form on June 29 2005.
The most
extraordinary conclusion of the report reads: “Given the history of such events
so far, it seems likely there will remain a significant chance of further plant
failures in the future, even with the comprehensive implementation of the
recommendations of this report.”
For an
unknown reason the report of this hugely significant accident is listed on the
Sellafield Ltd website under the section on “operational excellence”.
This
intitally led to a near three-year closure, with a loss of £2million a day, if
BNFL’s claims of the value of operating Thorp are to be believed. A further
closure of Thorp followed due to a separate incident.
On October
16 2006 at Carlisle Crown Court, Sellafield Ltd was fined £300,000 for the
breach of licence condition 27, £100,000 for the breach of licence condition 24
and £100,000 for the breach of licence condition 34.
I find it hard
to understand why none of these details found it into your article, although I
could understand if Nuclear Management Partners or the NDA might want to omit
such embarrassing details from any briefing they provided for the media, as
both are seeking new Sellafield contracts.
Dr David
LOWRY
Environmental
policy and research consultant
Stoneleigh,
Surrey
Sellafield's Thorp plant
celebrates 25 years in business
by David
Hemming
Whitehaven
News, Monday, 12 August 2013
It was the
largest single project ever completed in the UK, costing a mind-boggling
£2.8bn.
Inside Thorp
Since the
opening of the receipt and storage section at Sellafield’s Thermal Oxide Reprocessing
Plant, or Thorp for short, on August 8, 1988, more than 8,000 tonnes of fuel
have been dealt with.
What’s more,
it has also generated £9bn worth of business from 34 major customers in nine
different countries.
Staff,
bosses and nuclear industry leaders gathered at the swanky visitors’ centre
inside the massive building, which is the length of five football pitches, to
celebrate 25 years of safe operation on Thursday.
Times have
changed greatly since the day it opened.
Liverpool FC
were English champions, fuel was just 34p per litre, and Yazz and the Plastic
Population’s The Only Way Is Up topped the music charts.
But some
things in west Cumbria never change, like the debate surrounding new nuclear
missions.
Back then
site unions were leading the campaign for Sellafield to be a key part of the
UK’s energy future.
Nowadays the
debate focuses on plutonium reuse, new power generation and what to do with the
waste stored at Sellafield.
In 1988 the
workforce and local community were hailing the opening of Thorp’s receipt and
storage facility.
At the time
a huge public relations exercise was going in a bid to drum up support for the
plant.
This carried
on into the early 1990s when employees and trade union officials took to the
road with the Trust Us campaign.
And now
bosses are hailing the past quarter of a decade of Thorp as a “safe and
reliable operation”.
Alan Moses,
facility manager, pays tribute to the plant’s workforce.
He says:
“The employees in receipt and storage are highly skilled with an abundance of
expertise.
“Many of the
faces you see in the plant have been there since day one, the knowledge and
experience they have is invaluable – they know the place inside out.”
Mr Moses
also praises the team for being a “key element in keeping the lights on in
Britain”.
And head of
the Thorp operating unit, Jack Williamson, calls the plant the “blue ribbon of
the nuclear industry in the UK and worldwide”.
John Clarke,
chief executive of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA), worked at the
facility when it opened.
He explains
how it was set out to be something different from the outset – with a visitors’
centre making it accessible to the public.
He also says
there was a clear aim to operate differently to other sites, based on team
spirit.
“It paid
off,” he adds. “Our staff were happy back then and they still are today.
“It’s
testament to the fact that this is a special plant.”
American
Scott Sax, who recently took over as director of spent fuel management at
Sellafield, describes Thorp as “complex from a mechanical end to a chemical
end”.
“There’s no
other reactor anywhere else in the world that’s even close to being as
complex,” he adds. “It’s the people here who make the difference – in every
single team there’s someone who has been here for 25 years.
“That’s
really rare in an industry like this.”
In five
years Thorp will stop reprocessing but it won’t be a case of turning off the
lights and walking away.
The plant is
due to be decommissioned in 2018 as set out in the NDA’s Oxide fuel strategy.
But the
receipt and storage side will remain in operation until 2085.
“There is
still a lot of work that needs to be done,” Alan Moses says.
“Preparation
work is currently ongoing to put us in the best position to receive our UK
customers’ fuel in order for the fleet of reactors to keep producing
electricity.
“We will
continue to fulfil our customer’s needs, there is still a lot to do but we have
the workforce with which we can do it.”
Last year
Thorp completed its initial base load contract after reprocessing its 7,000th
tonne of spent nuclear fuel.
Steve
Nicholson from the Sellafield Workers’ Campaign insists the crusade to improve
public perception will also continue.
He says: “It
doesn’t seem that long ago that the Trust Us nuclear workers Thorp campaign was
out and about rallying for support.
“We may be
25 years on but the campaign is still out there lobbying.
“We are in
regular meetings with influential people including representatives of number 10
discussing nuclear topics.
“We will be
at the party political conferences once again this year, promoting the industry
in west Cumbria and making clear our core aim; to achieve the ongoing
development of the nuclear industry and finding a long term solution for the
UK’s higher level wastes, promoting new nuclear build as a source of low carbon
energy, and to support the re-use of plutonium.”
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