Sellafield's loss, nuclear's gain

["Sandy Perle" <sandyfl@earthlink.net>]

Friday, January 15, 1999 Published at 12:04 GMT  - BBC

Sellafield's loss, nuclear's gain  

Sellafield: The product of the quest for military nuclear power  

The Thorp nuclear reprocessing plant at Sellafield in Cumbria is in 
deep trouble.  

It needs German contracts to make it profitable. And Germany is 
cancelling its contracts.  

Ironically, the news could give a boost to the nuclear generating 
industry in Britain, which is increasingly caught in a double bind.  

In a world facing the onset of climate change, nuclear power has a 
clear role to play. It produces energy without emitting huge 
quantities of carbon dioxide.  

It may well not be the long-term answer. Even France, heavily 
dependent on nuclear power, now says it will accelerate its search 
for non-nuclear energy sources.  

But for the time being, the reactors which are already generating 
electricity are helping Britain and other countries to cut their CO2 
emissions.  

The problem, for the British nuclear industry, has always been that 
it is the by-product of the military programme that gave the country 
its nuclear bombs.  

Several objections  

When the government was considering whether to allow Thorp (the 
Thermal Oxide Reprocessing Plant) to start up, there were 
basically three arguments used by its critics.  

The first was that Thorp would mean more radioactive releases to 
the environment.  

That is true. But Sellafield as a whole is vastly less polluting than it 
was forty years ago.  

The second argument was that Thorp would be uneconomic.  

In the light of the German decision, that looks all too accurate.  

But the critics' third argument was that Thorp would be a 
dangerous white elephant, recovering from the spent fuel a highly 
toxic substance which could devastate cities and countries - 
plutonium.  

There is already more plutonium in existence than the world can 
safely handle.  

If Thorp now becomes uneconomic, and if BNFL has to stop 
reprocessing, the world could become a safer place.  

And the reactors which go on producing power day in, day out will 
be able to do so freed of their link to the reprocessing programme.  

The link may in fact be tenuous. But in the minds of many people it 
is there, and the distinction between civil and military nuclear 
energy is vanishingly small.  

An end to Thorp need not mean massive job losses in Cumbria, 
which needs all the jobs it can get.  

The Sellafield workers have built up expertise in waste 
management and nuclear clean-up work.  

They could earn a robust living by doing that, without producing any 
more plutonium to add to the world's threatening stockpile.  

As a senior nuclear industry official remarked to me recently: 
"Reprocessing makes no sense at all - unless you want to make 
bombs."

------------------------
Sandy Perle
E-Mail: sandyfl@earthlink.net
Personal Website: http://www.geocities.com/capecanaveral/1205

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