[ RadSafe ] Waste warning sounded in clamour for nuclear stations

Marcel Schouwenburg m.schouwenburg at tnw.tudelft.nl
Sun May 15 15:37:43 CEST 2005


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Guardian Reports : "Waste warning sounded in clamour for nuclear
stations"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/nuclear/article/0,2763,1483746,00.html

A new generation of nuclear stations will hamper attempts to find a 
solution to the nuclear waste problem, the government has been told.  The
Committee on Radioactive Waste Management (CoRWM), has said that  the
consensus between the nuclear industry, green groups and local 
authorities on what to do with waste may collapse.
Gordon MacKerron, the committee's chairman, said yesterday that the 
failure to deal with nuclear waste made people reluctant to support  new
stations until a solution had been found.
The committee's brief had been to find agreement on how to deal with  the
problem.
He said they were close to achieving this but if solving the waste 
problem meant opening the door to a new generation of nuclear
stations then: "We fear a large number of those involved in finding  a
solution would simply walk away. It would make our job far more 
difficult."
Although the government has not discussed the issue officially, the 
industry is calling for 10 stations to replace the existing ones
which are closing.
By 2020 the 20% of electricity currently produced by nuclear
stations will have shrunk to 7%.
Professor MacKerron said that the extra waste would add
another "half an Albert Hall full" to the pile but a big percentage  would
be in the form of spent fuel from the decommsioned stations,  which would
require a lot of new flasks to store it.
The committee has spent two years narrowing down the options for
disposing of waste from 15 to four and will come up with a proposed 
solution by June next year.
Rumours before the election that Tony Blair was to announce a new 
generation of nuclear stations as soon as he got back into
government led Prof MacKerron to fire off a letter pointing out the 
dangers to the programme of dealing with nuclear waste.
Yesterday another threat to CoRWM's programme emerged when a second 
nuclear waste agency, Nirex, threatened to publish a long secret
list of 12 places which might be suitable for the national nuclear  waste
dump.
Nirex, which used to be owned by the nuclear industry, and spent 15  years
unsuccessfully trying to find a site to bury waste found 500  potentially
suitable sites and drew up a shortlist of 12. This was  in 1989 but
neither list was ever published.
Last month Nirex was made an independent agency with the job of
advising the nuclear industry of how to package its waste for
disposal or storage once a solution had been found on how to dispose  of
waste. It has called local authorities and environment groups to  a
meeting with the idea of publishing the lists, which would almost 
certainly lead to the formation of groups opposed to nuclear dumping  at
each location named.
Prof MacKerron said: "It seems to be an odd decision to publish
lists that are 15 years old that cannot be relevant to what is
happening now.
"It is nothing to do with us and we have not been consulted but as  far as
we are concerned it would not be helpful because it would get  people very
excited. What we need is a calm discussion about how to  solve this
problem."
The four options CoRWM is discussing are variations of long-term
storage or disposal of the waste in the UK either above ground or in  deep
depositories.
Other options like firing it at the sun, burying it in ice caps or  oceans
have been discounted.
One of the problems with long-term storage is that it is not a final 
solution. Some of the less dangerous waste, like the rubble from
demolished power stations could be buried or stored on site until  the
radioactivity had decayed.
More dangerous waste like vitrified heat-producing glass blocks
containing nuclear fuel waste would have to kept for 50 years to
cool. They could be stored first deep below ground and either be
retrieved and made safe later if a new method could be found, or
subsequently buried.
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Marcel Schouwenburg
RadSafe moderator & listowner


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