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Sellafield nuclear waste storage poses ‘intolerable risk’ -Hitachi to burn plutonium

“It also concluded that over the five decades it was open, operators failed to plan how to dispose of the radioactive waste and some of the older facilities have “deteriorated so much that their contents pose significant risks to people and the environment”.”

Sellafield audit shows safety costs spiralling

• Rajeev Syal and Fiona Harvey
• guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 7 November 2012

The projected cost of safely storing radioactive material at Britain’s largest nuclear site in Sellafield has increased by more than £900m in 10 months, the National Audit Office says in a report released on Wednesday.

Plans to replace the ageing nuclear waste facilities in Cumbria have suffered severe delays, auditors said. Twelve out of 14 of the major projects launched last year to build facilities to store material safely are over budget, they have concluded.

The findings have been described as “dire” by MPs. It is the first official audit of the Cumbrian site since a consortium of private companies was brought in to oversee safety in 2008.

Margaret Hodge, who chairs parliament’s public accounts committee, urged the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) to “get a grip” on the spiralling costs. “My concern is that unless the authority holds Sellafield Limited [the company responsible for the site] to a clear and rigorously benchmarked plan, timetables will continue to slip and costs spiral.

“It is totally unacceptable to allow today’s poor management to shift the burden and expense of Sellafield to future generations of taxpayers and their families,” she said.

In 2008, the authority appointed a consortium of private sector companies – URS, AMEC and Areva – as a parent body of the site to bring in outside expertise. The authority plans to clear up the site over the next 108 years.

[…]

A long-term plan to clean up the site, which is managed by Sellafield Limited, was agreed last year after an earlier one stalled because it was “unrealistic”.

Sellafield, the UK’s most hazardous nuclear site, stores enough high and intermediate level radioactive waste to fill 27 Olympic-sized swimming pools.

For more than 50 years operators failed to plan how to dispose of the radioactive waste and some of the older facilities have “deteriorated so much that their contents pose significant risks to people and the environment”, the report said. The highest risks are posed by ponds and silos built during the 1950s and 1960s to store fuel for early reprocessing operations and radioactive waste, according to the report.

[…]

The management of the authority and Sellafield have often been criticised for being a closed group of insiders insufficiently transparent to outside scrutiny. Critics say this has led to a culture where poor decision-making has been tolerated.

Next year, a major industry shake-up could occur as the authority will have to make a decision on whether to review or renegotiate the Sellafield safety contract.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/nov/07/sellafield-audit-safety-costs-spiralling

BBC

7 November 2012 Last updated at 00:14

[…]

An “intolerable risk” is being posed by hazardous waste stored in run-down buildings at Sellafield nuclear plant, a watchdog has found.

The National Audit Office (NAO) also said that for 50 years, the operators of the Cumbria installation failed to develop a long-term plan for waste.

Costs of plant-decommissioning has also spiralled out of control, it said.

[..]

The plant is the UK’s largest and most hazardous nuclear site, storing enough high and intermediate level radioactive waste to fill 27 Olympic-sized swimming pools.

[..]

A long-term plan to clean up the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority-owned site, was agreed last year after an earlier one stalled because it was “unrealistic”.

Margaret Hodge, who chairs the public accounts committee, said: “Projects of this length and ambition are ripe for dithering and delay.

[…]

The authority’s revised plan sees critical milestones shunted back by up to seven years.

[…]

It is totally unacceptable to allow today’s poor management to shift the burden and expense of Sellafield to future generations of taxpayers and their families.”

‘Historic neglect’

The NAO report concludes that progress in 12 of the 14 major buildings and equipment projects considered “critical” for reducing risk, which range in cost from £21m to £1.3bn, also failed to achieve what they were supposed to and had not provided good value for money, the NAO also concluded.

[…]

Around 240 of Sellafield’s 1,400 buildings are nuclear facilities and so far 55 buildings on the site have been decommissioned.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cumbria-20228176

November 7, 2012 - Posted by arclight2011 | Uncategorized