Reuters article: OECD study says no health risk from spentnuclear fuel

[Jim Hardeman <Jim_Hardeman@mail.dnr.state.ga.us>]

OECD study says no health risk from spent nuclear fuel  
Wednesday 17 May 2000  
 
Top News  
 
LONDON, May 17 (Reuters) - An Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development study published this week has found the risk to human health from spent nuclear fuel to be "insignificantly low." Whether old nuclear fuel is reprocessed or stored, the affect on people was small, concluded the report by the OECD's Nuclear Energy Agency.

The report was commissioned by the 15-nation Oslo-Paris commission, a grouping of countries aimed at protecting the marine environment of the north-east Atlantic.

OSPAR meets in June to discuss proposals from Denmark and Ireland aimed at closing Britain's Nuclear Fuel's Thorp nuclear reprocessing plant, part of the Sellafield facility.

Denmark, Ireland and Norway claim substances produced at Sellafield during reprocessing are dangerous to the marine environment.

The study examined the radiological impact -- the affect of radiation on human health -- from both reprocessing and storing spent fuel.

Both options presented radiological impacts "well below any regulatory dose limits for the public and for workers". The study said there was "no compelling argument" in favour of either option. But critics of reprocessing were sceptical of the some of aspects of the report.

"I do not think the study is forward-looking enough. Restricting the examination to the impact on people living today is short-sighed. We need to be looking at the radiological impact for future generations," Frank Barnaby, an independent nuclear consultant working for the Oxford Research Group told Reuters.

"The consequence of reprocessing is plutonium and the threat that brings of nuclear weapons proliferation," said Barnaby, a former atomic weapons specialist.

Mark Johnston, at Friends of the Earth viewed storage as preferable to reprocessing. "It is less expensive and cleaner," he said.

The international campaign against Sellafield, northwest England, has been spurred on by research showing that lobsters and other shell fish in the North Sea and Irish Sea have high levels of Technetium 99, a radioactive isotope generated during reprocessing.

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Jim Hardeman
Jim_Hardeman@mail.dnr.state.ga.us

 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 
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