New Statesman 4th July 2018,Since the 1960s, the Navy has put 30 nuclear-powered submarines into
action, and 20 of these have since been retired, yet none of these 20 have
been dismantled.
HMS Dreadnought, Britain’s first ever nuclear submarine,
has been de-fuelled but is still waiting for scrapping – despite being
taken out of service in 1980. It is one of the 11 submarines retired beforethe turn of the century that are still inexplicably moored in British
ports. Given
Theresa May’s recently announced £600m boost to submarine
funding, one can’t help looking at the 20 decaying subs and wondering if
potential savings are being missed. Between 2010-16 alone, £16m was spent
on upkeep costs for subs that will never sail again. In a time when
efficiency is the watchword for the MOD, perhaps we should begin by dealing
with our fleet of Cold War relics. https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2018/07/nuclear-submarines-britain-quietly-forgot-about-cost-16m
The UK government has been forced to take a multibillion-pound nuclear cleanup contract back into public ownership, after a botched tender to the private sector landed the taxpayer with a £122m bill.
The government will take over the decommissioning of Britain’s 12 Magnox sites, including the former nuclear power stations at Dungeness in Kent and Hinkley Point in Somerset.
The move is a response to the fallout from the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) awarding a 14-year deal to the international consortium Cavendish Fluor Partnership in 2014.
Last year the government settled with two US companies that lost out on the £6.2bn contract and brought a legal challenge over the tender process.
Ministers terminated the contract early, leading to speculation over whether it would be put out to tender again to the private sector or brought back into public hands.
David Peattie, the NDA’s chief executive, told staff he understood they had faced uncertainty in recent months, as he confirmed that the private company Magnox Ltd would become a subsidiary of the NDA on 1 September. He said the change would result in “more efficient decommissioning”.
A source close to the process said: “The reason that this has been done is to remove some of the commercial complications and the large fees paid to contractors. This will ensure more money is spent directly on cleaning up these sites.”
Unions said they wanted talks with the new management regime for assurances over pay and terms.
Peter McIntosh, the Unite union’s acting national officer for energy, said: “This decision is long overdue. The 2014 contract should not have been awarded to any organisation.”
He added: “We need to ensure the taxpayer gets value for money through the transfer of the business and it is not paid for at the expense of the workforce.”
Whitehall’s spending watchdog, the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), has strongly criticised the NDA and the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy over the handling and oversight of the nuclear cleanup contract, one of the government’s biggest ever.
A review of the failings that led to the bungled process, written by the former National Grid boss Steve Holliday, is due to be published later this year.
Bringing the Magnox work back into the public sector means that about 85% of Britain’s nuclear cleanup work is in public hands, after the NDA’s takeover of the Sellafield storage and reprocessing site in 2016.
The PAC last week announced an inquiry into the NDA’s work at Sellafield, which is forecast to be £913m over budget and faces potential delays.
Magnox Ltd looks after 10 former Magnox power stations and two nuclear research sites.
Japan’s nuclear policy-setting body on Thursday endorsed a call for stricter management of its fuel recycling program to reduce its plutonium stockpile.
The annual “nuclear white paper” approved by the Atomic Energy Commission is an apparent response to intensifying pressure from Washington as it pursues denuclearization in North Korea. It says Japan’s fuel recycling program should continue, but minimize the amount of plutonium extracted from spent fuel for reuse in power generation to eventually reduce the stockpile.
Japan has pledged to not possess plutonium that does not have a planned use, but the promise increasingly sounds empty because of the slow restarts of Japanese power-generating reactors that can burn plutonium amid setbacks from the 2011 Fukushima disaster.
Though Japanese officials deny any possible misuse of the material and reprocessing technology, the large stockpile of plutonium that can make atomic bombs also raises security concerns as the U.S. wants North Korea to get rid of its nuclear weapons.
Commission chairman Yoshiaki Oka said the effort to tackle the stockpile is Japan’s own initiative underscoring its commitment to a peaceful nuclear program, and not because of the U.S. Oka said he was not aware of any outstanding problem between the two countries over the plutonium issue, but that Japan is taking into consideration the importance of maintaining “relationship of trust with the U.S.”
The commission is compiling guidelines to better manage and reduce the plutonium stockpile. Measures would include some government oversight in setting a cap on plutonium reprocessing and a study into how to steadily reduce the plutonium processed abroad.
Oka declined to cite a numerical target, but he said reducing the stockpile is a “must.”
Japan has nearly 47 tons of plutonium — 10 tons at home and the rest in France and Britain, where spent fuel from Japanese nuclear plants has been reprocessed because Japan is not able to reprocess it into plutonium-based MOX fuel at home.
The amount is enough to make 6,000 atomic bombs, but at Japan’s Rokkasho reprocessing plant denies any risk of proliferation, citing its safeguards and close monitoring by the International Atomic Energy Agency .
After years of delay due to technical issues, the Rokkasho plant is in the final stages of safety approvals by the regulators ahead of its planned launch in 2021. Critics, however, say that starting up the plant only adds to the stockpile.
The plant at full capacity can annually produce 8 tons of plutonium, and burning that would require 16-18 reactors — a long shot given the slow pace of restarts and public resistance. Japanese utility operators are also opting to decommission aged reactors rather than making costly safety upgrades to meet the post-Fukushima standards.
Only four reactors have restarted since the Fukushima crisis, using stricter safety requirements and despite resistance of neighbors.
Another setback for Japan’s plutonium balance is a failure of Monju, a plutonium-burning reactor built as the centerpiece of Japan’s fuel recycling program. Monju had been suspended after a major accident in 1995 and is now being scrapped.
an inspection in 2017, after most of the waste was retrieved from the tank, found widespread pitting on the bottom of the inner shell, allowing waste to seep through. The finding pointed to a corrosion problem.
Experts don’t know enough about the issue yet to tell if the thinning is recent or definitely say what caused it.
More of Hanford’s newest waste storage tanks could be at risk of developing leaks, according to a new evaluation.
Tank farm contractor Washington River Protection Solutions compared the chemistry of the waste in the nuclear reservation’s oldest double-shell tank, which was discovered to be leaking, to the waste in the nuclear reservation’s other double-shell tanks.
The evaluation’s conclusion and other findings about the condition of the Hanford Site’s double-shell tanks suggest a need to build more waste storage tanks for 56 million gallons of waste, according to the Washington Department of Ecology.
“We need to start doing something, the sooner the better,” said Steve Lowe, Ecology’s double-shell tank lead engineer. “Cleanup depends on it.”
He characterized three of the double-shell tanks that still hold waste as having “very high risk factors” for corrosion, based on information in the new study.
But the finding doesn’t mean the three tanks are leaking or will leak, said Jeremy Johnson, deputy DOE project director for the Hanford tank farms, at a recent Hanford Advisory Board committee meeting.
The Department of Energy is emptying the radioactive and hazardous chemical waste from 149 leak-prone single-shell tanks into 28 newer double-shell tanks for storage until the waste can be treated for disposal. The waste is left from the past production of plutonium for the nation’s nuclear weapons program.
But the first of the double-shell tanks — Tank AY-102, which dates to 1971 — has been taken out of service and emptied after developing a slow leak from its inner shell into the space between its shells.
Corrosion risks identified
Initially, officials suspected the leak was caused by construction problems, including welds that had to be reworked as many as four times.
But an inspection in 2017, after most of the waste was retrieved from the tank, found widespread pitting on the bottom of the inner shell, allowing waste to seep through. The finding pointed to a corrosion problem.
Now the new study finds three other of the double-shell tanks — AY-101, AZ-101 and AZ-102 — have held waste with similar chemistry to what’s suspected of corroding the bottom of the inner shell of Tank AY-102.
Among the issues with the three tanks, as well as the tank that leaked and has been emptied, is a history of holding waste that generates high heat, which could accelerate corrosion.
The waste chemistry is one of three potential problems in the 27 remaining double-shell tanks that Johnson discussed with advisory board committee members.
Two of the tanks with possible waste chemistry issues also have spots with thinning in a ring around the wall of the inner shell. The ring is where condensate, or water from ventilation systems in the tank farms, was added and interacted with the air before it mixed into the rest of the waste.
In addition, ultrasonic testing has found thinning of the steel in the bottom of the outer shell of nine of 11 of the double-shell tanks checked.
In one spot of Tank AP-102, the steel bottom of the shell had thinned up to 70 percent, according to DOE.
Experts don’t know enough about the issue yet to tell if the thinning is recent or definitely say what caused it.
However, DOE suspects that moisture may be infiltrating and corroding the outside of the tank where it sits underground on a concrete foundation. The foundation has drains to a sump system.
High pressure water is sprayed to move waste around on the bottom of the inner shell of Hanford Tank AY-102. Bubbles may indicate some of the seven leaks found inside the inner shell. No waste is believed to have escaped the tank’s outer shell. Ed
McClatchyCourtesy Washington River Protection Solutions
DOE has relied on an independent Tank Integrity Expert Panel, which met last week, to provide recommendations on the Hanford tanks.
The panel has “found areas of interest in time to take action before they become a problem,” Johnson said.
Ecology raises concerns
But the state is concerned that double-shell tank space already is in short supply, with several of the tanks at risk.
Every double-shell tank that fails will take two out of use — the one that failed and the one that is filled with waste from the failed tank, Lowe said. Double-shell tanks have a capacity of at least 1 million gallons.
DOE has said that once the vitrification plant starts turning low-activity radioactive waste into a stable glass form, as soon as 2021, about 12 million gallons of space will be freed up during the following decade in the double-shell tanks to empty more single-shell tanks.
But by the time the vitrification plant starts treating waste, the oldest of the double shell tanks will already be 50 years old. And some of the tanks will remain in service as the plant operates for another 40 years, Ecology officials pointed out.
One of the tanks identified as at high risk for corrosion, Tank AZ-101, holds waste that is expected to be treated as high-level radioactive waste, according to Ecology officials. The waste is expected to remain in the tank until 2036, when the vit plant is expected to be fully operational.
The Tank Integrity Expert Panel discussed the new study on tanks at risk of corrosion this week, and members said they were concerned that it underestimated risk, according to the Department of Ecology’s account of the meeting.
The study did not consider that multiple risks, such as waste that generates high temperatures and waste with certain chemistry, could be synergistic, creating faster corrosion than predicted, according to Ecology.
DOE taking action
DOE and its tank farm contractor are taking steps both to prevent further deterioration and to learn more.
A chemistry-control program for the double shell tanks will be revised, DOE said. Core samples will be collected to analyze the waste at the bottom of the three most at-risk tanks.
To prevent pitting in a ring around tanks from ventilation system condensate, the liquid now will be treated elsewhere at the nuclear reservation, rather than going into the tanks.
DOE also is evaluating ways to prevent moisture from collecting under outer shells and is considering whether corrosion inhibitor could be added.
New robots small enough to be used in the ventilation spaces between the bottoms of the two shells are being developed and could be used later this year to learn more about the condition of the tanks.
There also is a possibility that some repairs could be made on the outer shell.
Holtec International has proposed placing used fuel rods from all U.S. nuclear reactors in a shallow burial site near the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant. Recently, The New Mexican reprinted a Carlsbad Current-Argusarticle featuring the point of view of Holtec executives, who painted too rosy a view of the safety issues this proposed facility could present.
There is pressure from the public to move used fuel rods away from their current locations — the reactor sites — especially when reactors have been shut down. The risks of storage in casks are low, the risks of transport are higher; in either case, the failure of a single cask, whether through natural degradation processes or terrorism, could release more radiation than did the accidents at Chernobyl or Fukushima.
After removal from a reactor, the fuel rods are placed in pools of water, which allow this high-level waste to cool. After several years of cooling, they are placed into casks. Radioactivity given off by these fuel rods remains dangerous to all life for at least 10,000 years. They are much more radioactive than the waste at WIPP.
The canister design approved by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that Holtec proposes is a thin-walled design, with an interior five-eighth-inch stainless-steel cask holding fuel rods. That is placed into another stainless-steel cask, with lead and boron in between to abate radiation. Two vent holes in the exterior cask allow cooling air to flow. Casks need to cool to 400 degrees Celsius to allow safe transport.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission estimates very low risk of cask failure for at least 20 years. However, it will take 20-30 years for the casks to cool enough for transport. Given that cask cracking has been observed after 10 years, ultimate failure seems likely.
The long-term solution is likely to be underground burial at a well-researched location. It is unlikely that this high-level waste will be cool enough for a long-term underground repository until about 60 years after it is removed from the reactor.
The proposed Holtec interim storage facility has numerous fatal procedural and structural flaws. Alkaline soils there are corrosive. Fencing the site will not protect the area from armor-piercing artillery launched by terrorists from either of the two roads surrounding the site. There will be no continuous monitoring program to detect leaks. There is no plan on how to deal with leaking canisters. The data on radiation exposure to workers is proprietary. Transport vibration could cause cracking of the fuel rods, after which they cannot be safely transported at all. The best transport is via rail at low speeds, but the railroads have not been contracted. The transportation casks have not been tested to failure: What about a head-on collision of two trains, or trains falling off of a bridge?
The storage plan should be an integrated one, which industry experts admit is not the current approach. The movement of casks should be minimized. Unless a permanent repository is developed, the proposed interim site could become permanent. WIPP was studied as a transuranic radioactive waste site, not a high-level waste site, and no high-level waste repository exists.
It is no wonder that pecan farmers, dairy farmers and the oil, gas and tourism industries are worried. One accident could shut down the entire region. After 10,000 canisters have been sent to southeast New Mexico, at least one serious accident is likely to occur, based on Department of Energy analysis performed by Sandia engineers regarding shipping high-level waste to Yucca Mountain in Nevada. Your grandkids might never get to visit Carlsbad Caverns. Are the 50-100 jobs that Holtec would bring worth the risk of 10 centuries of contamination?
The deadline for comments to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is July 30. Submit comments to: Holtec-CISFEIS@nrc.gov
For further information, go to riograndesierraclub.org/holtec. John Buchser of Santa Fe is the immediate past chairman of the Rio Grande Chapter of the Sierra Club. He is interested in seeking solutions to sustainable use of our water in New Mexico and West Texas.
A NEW scheme has been launched to prevent a concrete reservoir at a nuclear site with the capacity to hold a million gallons of water from collapse.
Blacknoll Hill underground reservoir is set to be decommissioned under new proposals which have been submitted to Purbeck District Council by Magnox.
The project is one of the biggest steps as part of the ongoing decommissioning of the former Winfrith nuclear power station by Magnox Ltd, who currently manages the western half of the former power station site on behalf of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority
The Blacknoll reservoir consists of a 126ft by 96ft reinforced concrete tank sunk approximately 17ft below the surface near to the top of Blacknoll Hill with the roof of the reservoir being supported by 28 steel reinforced columns and an internal wall running along its length.
Its purpose when it was built in 1960 was as a source of softened water supply for site operations and as a source of water in the event emergency cooling was required at one of the reactor plants throughout Winfrith operations.
In a planning document by Hayrock on behalf of Magnox, said: “Structurally, the reservoir is in good condition; however, deterioration could lead to the eventual collapse of the structure if it was abandoned.”
Public Accounts Committee 29th June 2018, A new report by the National Audit Office into the NDA found that work at
Sellafield accounted for 61% of the NDA’s total £3.3 billion expenditure
in 2017–18. 8 of NDA’s 10 most hazardous sites are at Sellafield,
whilst NAO expected current major projects at Sellafield will cost £6
billion total.
The NAO found that the NDA had made significant progress in
reducing delays and meeting significant milestones, but expects major NDA
projects to cost more than originally estimated in 2015.
Evaluating performance at Sellafield remained difficult due to the complexity and
scale of the site, but more could be done to explain progress, and to
provide assurance of major projects. The Committee will take evidence from
the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, the Nuclear
Decommissioning Authority, and Sellafield to explore NDA and Sellafield’s
progress and performance. If you wish to submit written evidence to this
inquiry, the deadline to do so is midday on Tuesday 10 July. https://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/public-accounts-committee/inquiries/parliament-2017/nuclear-decommissioning-authority-17-19/
,In order to remove 1 metric ton of defense plutonium from South Carolina within two years, as a federal court has required, the U.S. Department of Energy is considering the plutonium’s nuclear weapon uses.
According to a June 13 progress report, the DOE and its National Nuclear Security Administration are re-examining the possibility of repurposing some Savannah River Site plutonium for “future defense programs.”
“Approximately 1 metric ton was identified for possible use by the weapons production program,” the report reads. “The amount of candidate programmatic material at SRS is limited; most of the surplus material is not suitable for weapons program use.”
The DOE’s prospective plan would shift the plutonium from SRS to another site, either for interim storage or plutonium pit production.
Plutonium pits are nuclear weapon cores, often referred to as triggers.
Potential out-of-state relocation sites for the 1 metric ton of plutonium have been identified, according to the DOE.
The June report did not specify where. Site studies concluded in April.
Environmental impact assessments for moving the plutonium, required by the National Environmental Policy Act, are already underway and could be completed by the end of 2018, the report notes.
In 2017, a U.S. District Court judge ordered the DOE to remove 1 metric ton of plutonium from the state within two years, the result of a lawsuit launched by S.C. Attorney General Alan Wilson. At the time, Wilson celebrated the ruling as a major win.
The DOE has stated disposing 1 ton of plutonium via downblending, also known as dilute-and-dispose, would take until fiscal year 2025 to complete at current funding and operation levels. A court-received declaration made by Henry Allen Gunter, then a plutonium program manager and technical adviser at SRS, reinforced the DOE’s claim.
More funding and more trained personnel, according to the June report, would speed things up.
But planning related to dilute-and-dispose – mixing plutonium with inert material for burial at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico – ceased in June due to another court order that protected the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility.
The defense- and weapons-use option, according to the DOE’s report, vastly undercuts the 2025 estimate: “Indeed, the department believes that it is possible that, if successful, this option might allow the department to meet the current two-year timeline imposed by the district court,” the report reads.
According to the DOE, the plutonium is “safe and secure in its present location.” Moving it costs money and poses radiological, safety and security concerns, all of which are listed at the end of the report.
Eventually, the plutonium would have to be moved to Los Alamos National Laboratory or back to SRS for pit production.
On May 10, the DOE and the U.S. Department of Defense recommended a pit production mission for SRS, which muddies the waters a bit. Those plans have not yet been finalized.
Los Alamos currently does not have enough room for the 1 metric ton, the DOE report states. Holding it at an interim location incurs additional costs.
More information and detail, including timing, will be made available in December, the June report states.
Nucnet 25th June 2018, A full-scale in-situ system test for spent nuclear fuel disposal is
expected to begin this week at Posiva’s planned final deep geologic
disposal facility at Olkiluoto, Finland. Posiva’s owner Teollisuuden
Voima Oyj (TVO) said the test will be the first of its kind and means that
Posiva is making progress towards the operational test phase of its final
disposal system and technology.
According to TVO, the test will last for
several years. It aims to prove that the prototype processes for geological
storage at Posiva’s repository are “all working concepts”. The test
has been in preparation since December 2017, TVO said. The processes
include placing fuel assemblies packed in copper-steel canisters inside
holes drilled in the bedrock tunnels. This is followed by backfilling the
tunnels with bentonite clay and sealing them with a cast plug. Two test
canisters will be equipped with thermal resistors simulating the residual
temperature of spent nuclear fuel, TVO said. A TVO official said the
temperature and pressure in the canisters, test holes and the surrounding
bedrock, and the behaviour of the backfill of the tunnels, will be
monitored by some 500 sensors over several years. https://www.nucnet.org/all-the-news/2018/06/25/finland-s-posiva-to-begin-world-s-first-in-situ-system-test-at-final-repository-site
EDF and VEOLIA Conclude a Partnership Agreement on Nuclear Plant Decommissioning and Radioactive Waste Processing, Business Wire June 26, 2018
“We are proud to have signed this agreement with VEOLIA, which underscores EDF’s determination to become a key player in decommissioning and radioactive waste management. This partnership is also tangible evidence of EDF and VEOLIA’s desire to pool their know-how in the interest of developing successful industrial sectors.”
On 26 June 2018, EDF and VEOLIA (Paris:VIE) entered a partnership agreement to co-develop remote control solutions for dismantling gas-cooled reactors (natural uranium graphite gas or UNGG in French) and for vitrifying radioactive waste, in France and worldwide.
EDF is currently decommissioning 6 gas-cooled reactors reactors at Bugey (Ain department in France), Chinon (Indre-et-Loire department) and Saint-Laurent-des-Eaux (Loir-et-Cher). Key milestones have already been secured on all these complex projects, and EDF confirms its objective to dismantle these nuclear facilities in the shortest timeframe possible. Veolia will thus provide EDF with its experience in remote handling technologies (robotics) with a view to designing and delivering innovative solutions to access the cores of gas-cooled reactors and to cut up and extract components under optimum safety and security conditions……..https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180626005932/en/EDF-VEOLIA-Conclude-Partnership-Agreement-Nuclear-Plant
The U.S. Senate approved a Hanford spending bill for the next fiscal year that would provide $315 million more for the nuclear reservation than proposed by the Trump administration.
The vote was 86-5 for a package of funding bills.Earlier this month, the U.S. House passed a spending bill for fiscal 2019 that would provide $247 million more for the Hanford Site than the administration’s funding request.
The two bills next must be reconciled. A final version then could be sent to President Donald Trump for his signature.
The Senate bill would restore all but $25 million of the cuts to current spending that were proposed by the administration.
The total Hanford budget under the Senate plan would be $2.4 billion, plus some additional money for security at the site.
“Once again, I’m proud that Democrats and Republicans have come together to reject President Trump’s senseless budget cuts and instead craft a budget that honors the sacrifices of central Washington families,” said Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash.
Murray, a senior member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, worked to secure money for Hanford as the appropriations bill was being written.
Bellona 18th June 2018 , The pace of cleanup at a major Cold War dump for spent nuclear submarine
fuel in Northwest Russia is going faster than planned, officials with
Russia’s state nuclear corporation Rosatom have said, with efforts racing
ahead twice as rapidly as initially thought possible.
Still, Rosatom has elected not to revise its deadline for removing decades of piled up nuclear
fuel assemblies at Andreyeva Bay, a Soviet era submarine maintenance base,
whose proximity to Europe made it a lighting rod for international
environmental concern. On Thursday, Anatoly Grigoryev, who heads up
Rostom’s international technical programs, told the Interfax newswire
that technicians had shipped away a load of fuel that was expected to take
a year to remove in only six months. http://bellona.org/news/nuclear-issues/2018-06-andreyeva-bay-nuclear-fuel-removal-going-faster-than-planned-rosatom-says
Keith Matheny, Detroit Free Press June 22, 2018 Up to 124,000 tons of low-level radioactive soil and other materials from a contaminated former military supplier in Ohio will begin arriving at a Wayne County landfill next week, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has announced.
The soil and materials are headed for Wayne Disposal Inc., U.S. Ecology’s hazardous waste landfill off I-94 near Willow Run Airport in Van Buren Township. Once the soil disposal operation is fully underway, up to 11 tractor-trailers per day, each carrying about 15 tons of contaminated soil, are expected to head north on local freeways from the village south of Toledo to the Wayne County landfill, Army Corps officials said Thursday. There’s no indication the shipments would be every day. A U.S. Ecology spokesman said the remediation project could take 8 to 10 years.
It’s part of a major cleanup of what’s known as the Luckey site, a long-shuttered beryllium plant in Luckey, Ohio. The plant supplied the strong, light but highly toxic metal to the U.S. military and Atomic Energy Commission in the 1940s and 1950s.
NBC26 ,Alan Campbell, Jun 22, 2018 VAN BUREN TOWNSHIP, Mich.— There are questions about radioactive soil and materials coming from out of state to the Wayne County landfill in Michigan.
The landfill is off I-94 near Willow Run airport. Up to 124,000 tons will be dumped.
We’re told this is low level radioactive soil and materials that isn’t harmful to the environment or people, but people who live nearby say they don’t feel it should be dumped here.
“It does make me concerned about the children around here,” said 70-year-old Debra Polak, a resident who lives a few blocks from the landfill site.
Decommissioning NO2Nuclear Power. Safe Energy Journal 78 The UK government has launched a consultation on the future regulation of nuclear sites in the final stages of decommissioning and clean-up. The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) said the consultation seeks to enable a “more flexible approach that can optimise waste management, thereby realising environmental benefits and reducing costs”.
Of the 36 nuclear sites located across England, Wales and Scotland, the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) is responsible for the decommissioning and clean-up of 17. Other sites to be decommissioned in the future include the operational nuclear power stations owned by EDF Energy, and other nuclear sites in the nuclear fuel cycle, reprocessing, waste management, pharmaceutical and research sectors.
In the UK, the Nuclear Installations Act 1965 (NIA65) provides the legal framework for nuclear safety and nuclear third-party liability and sets out a system of regulatory control based on a robust licensing process administered by the Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR). Under this regime, a site operator is required to have a licence to use a site for specified activities such as the operation of nuclear power stations. In addition to the nuclear site licensing regime, the NIA65 requires that financial provision is in place to meet claims in the event of a nuclear incident, as required under international law on nuclear third-party liability.
The consultation proposals include changing the NIA65 to allow licensees to exit the licensing regime once the site has reached internationally agreed standards and nuclear safety and security matters have been fully resolved. After the licence has been ended, the site would be regulated by the relevant environment agency and the Health and Safety Executive, in the same way that non-nuclear industrial sites undergoing clean-up for radioactive or other contamination are regulated.
Proposals for further clean-up would be assessed by the relevant environment agency under the Radioactive Substances Regulations. BEIS said this process would enable the site operator to work with the community to establish the “most appropriate” end-state for the site and would result in improved waste management and other environmental benefits.
BEIS proposes to implement two recent decisions by the OECD Steering Committee for Nuclear Energy concerning the exclusion of certain sites from the nuclear third-party regime when the main nuclear hazards have been removed and the risks to the public are small. It also proposes to tighten the licence surrender process to require a licensee to apply to ONR to surrender the licence, and to strengthen requirements for ONR to consult with HSE when the licence is surrendered or varied. (1)
The Government says the main reasons for change are:
nuclear third party liability currently continues beyond the point at which it is no longer required. The UK has not yet implemented the decisions of the OECD Steering Committee for Nuclear Energy concerning the exclusion of certain sites from the nuclear liability regime;
site operators wishing to exit the NIA65 licensing regime are required to clean-up the site in a way that does not allow them to balance the overall safety and environmental risks and this may result in unnecessary costs; and
· disposal facilities for radioactive waste located on nuclear licensed sites remain subject to nuclear licensing. Such sites are also regulated by the environment agencies. This is considered dual regulation which is unnecessary after nuclear safety matters have been resolved.
The UK Government Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) published a discussion paper on the regulation of nuclear sites in the final stages of decommissioning and cleanup in November 2016. The NFLA responded here:
There is a danger that what is being proposed will simply be seen as turning nuclear sites into nuclear dumps as a way of saving money.
The concept of “optimisation” which is decided by the operator and regulators making value judgements needs to be replaced with the concept of the Best Practicable Environmental Option which uses a systematic consultative and decision making procedure.
Any part of a nuclear site upon which it is proposed to allow unrestricted use must be able to show that doses to members of the public will be of the order of 0.01mSv or less per year. Using a risk factor in conjunction with probability of receiving a dose is too flexible and unacceptable.
Any waste left on-site much be concentrated and contained in a monitorable, retrievable store.
Former nuclear operators should remain liable for any future unexpected events and should also be liable to pay for any regulatory effort in perpetuity.
These earlier proposals appear to allow for the unrestricted use of sites which may have nuclear waste buried and which could be capable of administering doses of up to 20mSv/yr if human intrusion occurs.
The HSE Criterion for De-Licensing Nuclear Sites (2005) says the Basic Safety Standards Directive (Euratom 96/29) allows member states to exempt a practice where appropriate and without further consideration if doses to members of the public are of the order of 0.01mSv or less per year. HSE is of the view that this dose limit broadly equates to a risk of 10-6 ‘as well as being consistent with other legislation and international advice relating to the radiological protection of the public. The environment agencies Guidance on Requirements for Authorisation (GRA) on Near Surface Disposal Facilities for Solid Radioactive Waste (Near Surface GRA) says that a risk level of 10-6 per year is equivalent to a calculated dose of around 0.02mSv/yr, where the probability of receiving the dose is one.
The consultation is open until 3rd July, and is available here:
The nuclear industry and the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission are threatening to restart Pennsylvania’s permanently closed and decommissioning Three Mile Island Unit 1 nuclear power station. Three expert speakers will present the resistance to this dangerous misadventure in a webinar hosted by the Clamshell Alliance, Beyond Nuclear and Massachusetts Peace Action.
nuclear-news 