The multi-billion pound plant, with a design life ‘of at least 25 years’ and once described as the jewel in Sellafield’s crown, will be downgraded to a waste treatment facility around 2010 to enable the company to concentrate on cleaning up the Sellafield site.
Pulling the reprocessing plug on THORP indicates a spectacular failure by BNFL to win any significant new orders for the plant since it opened in 1994. It was then claimed that the plant would deal with 7000 tonnes of spent fuel, from orders already secured, within the first ten years of operation (the Baseload). Government and doubters were assured by BNFL that there was an abundance of businees to be had for THORP and that new orders were already ‘in the pipeline’.
Now in its tenth year of operation and plagued by a range of problems since it opened THORP has reprocessed little over 4000 of the 7000 tonne Baseload and is currently running at least three years behind schedule. At the current rate THORP might complete the Baseload and the smaller volume post-Baseload business from British Energy and Germany by around 2010.
Fighting off opposition claims in the early 1990’s that the plant was a white elephant that would bankrupt BNFL, the company’s then Chief Executive Neville Chamberlain said that “THORP is already certain to be a successful project that will underpin BNFL’s profitabity over the next quarter of a century”
CORE’s spokesperson said today “ It is ironic that at the same time as this so-called flagship plant continues to flounder, BNFL has been declared bankrupt. In their haste to get the plant open in the early 1990’s, they deliberately ignored the increasing worldwide trend against reprocessing and the dwindling prospects for new contracts.
THORP throughput continues to be specifically limited by the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate to around 50% of design throughput. This follows BNFL’s inability to get its waste vitrification process working to a level where the liquid High Level Wastes from THORP can be treated. Designed to reprocess over 1000 tonnes per year, THORP was limited to just 500 tonnes last year.
In 2005 THORP is expected to be handed over to the Nuclear Decommissioning Agency (NDA) along with BNFL’s other liabilities. Uncertainties about both the German and British Energy post-Baseload orders may lead the NDA to consider stopping reprocessing at THORP even earlier than 2010.
CORE added: “We welcome any plan that moves Sellafield away from reprocessing and towards clean-up work.