As BNFL’s oldest nuclear cargo ship Pacific Swan left her home port of Barrow-in-Furness yesterday bound for a breakers yard at Rotterdam, details were emerging about the company’s plans to order a new ship – with the option of having a second ship built at the same time. A notice in the Europeasn Journal provides details of a BNFL application inviting tenders for the construction of the new ship(s). Invitations to a shortlist of 5 firms were sent out in December last year, with tenders to be ‘opened’ in February this year. The time period for execution of the contract is given as starting July 2005 and ending November 2007, with the new ship(s) delivered to a designated port.
The contract is for the purchase of a new vessel of 4500 tonnes with an option ‘which BNFL may or may not exercise, for the purchase of a second vessel’ which will be ‘a repeat of the first vessel and possibly built at the same time’. The new ship will be built to the International Maritime Organisation’s (IMO) category INF3 standard. This category, under an international code for the safe carriage of radioactive materials, will allow the ship to carry irradiated (spent) reactor fuel, high level radioactive wastes, plutonium and new mixed oxide (MOX) reactor fuel.
BNFL’s notice of tender in the European Journal confirms rumours of the last few years that their ageing fleet would have to be brought up to date. Further confirmation comes from a Government commissioned consultation report in 2004 looking at waste ‘substitution’ issues whereby BNFL might return to customers only their small volume high level wastes, with the UK keeping the much larger volumes of intermediate and low level wastes. Setting out a rough timetable of 2007-2017 for these return shipments, the report comments that given the age of the existing fleet ‘additional ships would need to be procured or life extensions would need to be granted’.
The existing fleet consists of five ships, two of which are owned outright by BNFL and used for European and Atlantic work. The three other ships are owned by Pacific Nuclear Transport Limited (PNTL) with BNFL as the majority shareholder. Other shareholders include the French company Cogema and a number of Japanese electricity utilities. The ships, Pacific Teal (built 1982) , Pacific Sandpiper (built 1985) and the Pacific Pintail (built 1987) are all IMO category INF3 standard, are registered at Barrow-in-Furness and of similar tonneage to the proposed new ship(s). The Pintail and Teal are both armed with 30mm naval canon and carry a security crew of United Kingdom Atomic Energy police when transporting plutonium and MOX fuel.
The cost of a new ship(s) remains unknown at this point as is the eventual port of registration.and whether or not naval armament will be fitted. The Pacific Sandpiper was built twenty years ago at an estimated cost of £11M, a cost likely to be significantly more than double today.
The PNTL ship Pacific Swan (built 1979) is to be broken up for scrap by the Dutch company Scheepsloperij Nederland BV at S- Gravendeel. It follows the scrapping last year of the Pacific Crane (built 1980) at the same breakers yard after evidence of rusting to the hull. All the PNTL ships were designed primarily for shipping irradiated nuclear fuel from Japan to Sellafield for reprocessing, a trade that was completed several years ago.
The BNFL-owned ships are the Atlantic Osprey (built 1986, INF2 category and purchased third-hand by BNFL) and the European Shearwater (built 1981, INF3 category). The former is based at the port of Workington and, with extra accommodation now fitted for a sceurity crew, is earmarked for transporting plutonium MOX fuel to Europe. The European Shearwater, registered at Barrow-in-Furness, is currently transporting irradiated reactor fuel from BNFL’s European customers to Sellafield for reprocessing. This trade will finish in the summer 2005.