Filed for The Guardian, 27 November 1992
Anti-nuclear groups have been accused of ignoring the dangers of a proposed 100-year nuclear fuel store which will be examined at a public inquiry starting tomorrow (Tuesday 1 December).
The government company, Scottish Nuclear, has applied for permission to build a dry store for used uranium fuel at its Torness nuclear station in south east Scotland. The main objectors, East Lothian District Council, will be arguing that the store could end up becoming a permanent high-level nuclear waste dump.
Using documents made available by Scottish Nuclear, independent experts will suggest that tiny cracks in the fuel cladding combined with a build-up of internal pressure could cause the leakage of radioactive gases. One report prepared for the company in July warns of contamination from powdered uranium and says that insufficient attention had been paid to the risk of “rupture strain”.
The main anti-nuclear groups like Greenpeace and the Scottish Campaign to Resist the Atomic Menace (SCRAM) will not be represented at the inquiry because they support the principal of dry storage in preference to reprocessing at Sellafield. They are campaigning against the opening next year of a new reprocessing plant on the Cumbrian site - historically Britain’s largest source of radioactive pollution.
“They have offered Scottish Nuclear a cheap and nasty way out,” said the Labour MP for East Lothian, John Home Robertson. “We should not be putting material with an active life of millennia into a building with a design life of 100 years. There is always something that can go wrong. We need a long term solution.”
But anti-nuclear campaigners argued that the best solution would be to stop producing any waste in the first place by closing down nuclear power stations. “The reprocessing alternative complicates the problem, increases the volume of waste, increases the radioactive discharges, endangers the public on the transport routes and is many times more expensive,” said Pete Roche from Greenpeace.
Mike Townsley from SCRAM added: “The environmental movement, unlike the nuclear industry, has an extremely limited budget. I am afraid that we have to use our resources to campaign against greater evils.”
Scottish Nuclear has opted for the multi-million pound store because it will be cheaper than transporting spent fuel to Sellafield and paying British Nuclear Fuels to reprocess it. Its decision has upset BNFL, which is fearful for the future of its £9 billion reprocessing business.
Scottish Nuclear’s assistant director of engineering, Peter Boocock, dismissed the idea that Torness would become a permanent waste dump. He was “absolutely confident” that it would be possible to transport the fuel away for reprocessing or disposal at the end of 100 years storage.
None of Scottish Nuclear’s fuel rods had so far failed and he was confident that fuel cladding would remain intact in the dry store.
Even if leakages did occur, they would be detected and contained within the surrounding steel tubes.
The inquiry, which takes place in Dunbar under deputy chief reporter, Robert Hickman, is expected to be over within four weeks.