Hard on the heels of Government confirmation that SMP had managed to produce just 5.2 tonnes of MOX fuel in five years of operation comes the admission from operators Sellafield Limited that ‘overall production has fallen behind’ as a result of a continuing production failures.
Responding to questions on SMP from CORE, a spokesman for Sellafield Ltd told the Sellafield Site’s Stakeholder Group meeting this month that whilst some 4 tonnes of MOX fuel pellets and around 1000 MOX fuel rods had been fabricated in SMP for Germany’s Grohnde nuclear power station, not one fuel assembly had yet been completed for the customer. Sellafield Ltd confirmed that the Grohnde order is due to be completed in 2009.
Work on the German contract is known to have commenced early in 2007 following the completion and delivery of SMP’s first order for Switzerland’s Beznau power station. Poor performance is blamed on ‘a bottleneck’ in the fuel rod section of SMP’s production line, a failure that is likely to be behind moves by other German customers whose power stations are due for closure over the next few years to consider sub-contracting further SMP orders to other European MOX fuel fabricators. Sources quoted in the industry’s Nuclear Fuel journal (March 24th) have said that German operators are working on alternatives to MOX from SMP and that French company Areva was likely to take on more MOX fabrication on behalf of Sellafield Ltd so that customers could recycle their plutonium without further delay. SMP’s design production rate of 120 tonnes of MOX fuel per year, subsequently reduced to 75 tonnes/yr, is now confirmed as around 40 tonnes/yr.
Regulators HSE Nuclear Installations Inspectorate (NII) has also confirmed that official ‘Consent to Operate’ SMP is not now expected to be given until 2009/10. The Consent, which effectively indicates the plant’s transition from active commissioning to full commercial production, was originally projected by the NII to have been granted in early 2004 – 2 years after plutonium was first introduced into the plant in April 2002.
Whilst SMP’s future continues under ongoing NDA and Government review, there is currently no independent assessment of the plant’s progress. Responses to Freedom of Information requests have revealed that, since an independent assessment by consultants Arthur D Little (ADL) was completed in June 2006, no further independent advice has since been sought by the NDA and that current assessments are being provided only by Sellafield Ltd and its in-house contractors. Given ADL’s 2006 comments that SMP’s potential production of only a few tonnes of plutonium per year at best … and the prospect of fully automatic operation now only a remote possibility had seriously eroded the plant’s net value, the lack of any form of current independent oversight paints a picture of a plant lacking proper control and scrutiny.
As a consequence of several SMP orders having to be sub-contracted to Europe in recent years because of the Sellafield plant’s poor performance, a number of highly controversial and secretive shipments of plutonium dioxide powder must now be made from Sellafield to Europe in the near future as ‘repayment’ for the plutonium used by the French and Belgian fabricators. The first shipment to France, scheduled to arrive at Cherbourg on board the NDA’s ship Atlantic Osprey in mid-March was cancelled when the media was ‘tipped off’ in advance in France by Greenpeace France and by CORE in the UK (Independent on Sunday 9th March).
To date, the first shipment has still not been made and further problems contributing to the delay are understood to include technical issues in receiving the plutonium at France’s La Hague plant and incomplete inter-governmental agreement for such shipments. The ship Atlantic Osprey, a converted roll on-roll off car ferry purchased second hand by BNFL and which lacks the security measures incorporated in other ships in the nuclear fleet, operates out of the relatively insecure port of Workington north of Sellafield. Over 1 tonne of plutonium is expected to be returned to Europe, but the total will increase if further SMP orders have to be sub-contracted in the future.
THORP reprocessing
After an almost 3-year closure following the leak of 80,000 litres of dissolved fuel and nitric acid in April 2005, THORP is again up and running – but only just. Permission to re-start was given by the NII in January 2007 and a test batch of 33 tonnes of AGR fuel was completed in August of that year. A second batch of 100 tones of AGR and overseas fuel was scheduled for 28th January 2008 but was abandoned without any fuel being sheared and dissolved when the fuel elevator, which lifts fuel from the feed pond into the plant’s Head-End, suffered a major breakdown.
Whilst the elevator has now been repaired and a start made on the 100 tonne batch, THORP’s operational prospects remain bleak. Originally designed to reprocess at an annual rate of up to 1000 tonnes of spent fuel each year, the plant had averaged only around 475 tonnes/yr in the 12 years up to its 2005 accident closure. Modifications to the accident damaged Feed Clarification Cell have subsequently reduced future annual throughput level in the plant – with only one of the two original accountancy tanks being available for use. This alone ensures that THORP can never again operate as originally designed.
Despite this accident-inflicted restriction, the NDA remained confident that THORP would be able to reprocess around 600 tonnes per year, but the claim made no allowance for many other factors that will further limit the plant’s future performance. These included the need for a cautious ‘ramp-up’ after a 3-year closure, a number of already scheduled and lengthy stoppages over the coming years, unscheduled stoppages and accidents, the reprocessing of ‘difficult fuels which pose particular challenges’, the reprocessing of spent MOX fuel which requires a reconfiguration of the plant and the lack of evaporative capacity to deal with the liquid high level wastes produced during reprocessing. The latter represents the greatest challenge to THORP today.
THORP relies wholly on the use of one Evaporator only, Evaporator C. Two other Evaporators A and B serve the magnox reprocessing plant and Sellafield’s vitrification plant. Both Evaporators have proved unreliable over recent years with Evaporator A working intermittently and Evaporator B has remained closed since 2005. As a result, the use of THORP’s Evaporator C has had to be shared with both magnox reprocessing and vitrification, thus limiting THORP’s progress. A new Evaporator D has been ordered and is expected to be operational around 2010 and Sellafield Ltd is currently assessing the need for one further Evaporator E.
The consequence of THORP of having to share its Evaporator, probably until 2010 and the arrival of Evaporator D, is that the plant is projected by Sellafield Ltd to reprocess just 300 tonnes of spent fuel this financial year (2008/09) and a further 300 tonnes in 2009/10, a majority of which will be British Energy AGR fuel. At this rate, with some 750 tonnes of foreign fuel still under contract, some overseas customers are now unlikely to see their contracts completed until at least 2014/15 – some 10 years late.
The claim of a 300 tonne throughput for this financial year itself appears somewhat suspect as a five month outage has already been scheduled by Sellafield Ltd for THORP commencing in June 2008. The outage is required to replace the plant’s existing Medium Active Salt Free Evaporators (MASFE) which process THORP’s medium active liquors. The fitting of the four new evaporators and associated separator and steam stripper was initiated in December 2007 when a section of THORP’s roof had to be removed to allow the first 20-tonne MASFE evaporator to be craned in. The final fitting and connection to the plant’s existing process systems is due for completion around November 2008.