Sellafield’s euphoria at last year’s NDA announcement of a Japanese rescue package for the Sellafield MOX Plant (SMP) may be dashed by the ongoing nuclear fallout from Japan. This includes not only last week’s demand by the country’s Prime Minister Naoto Kan that Chubu Electric’s Hamaoka be closed down (the only utility to place a firm contract with a revamped SMP when it re-opens ) but also Chubu Electric’s decision in December last year to postpone Hamaoka’s MOX fuel programme until the station’s ‘seismic activity’ safety case had been fully overhauled.
Last year’s rescue package, described by the NDA as a lifeline for the moribund SMP, is now at the mercy of the knock-on effects of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami disaster, the ongoing catastrophe at Fukushima, and the increasing official and public hostility in Japan to the use of mixed oxide fuel (MOX) on safety and security grounds. Under the rescue package, the production of MOX fuel for Hamaoka’s Unit 4 was to be a ‘trial run’ for the resuscitated SMP if and when it re-opens in around two years time. The success or failure of the trial, would dictate whether or not other Japanese utilities could be enticed to place orders.
The Hamaoka nuclear power station’s five reactors are sited directly above the geological subduction zone of two tectonic plates in a region of Japan considered overdue for a major earthquake – an impending event feared by Prime Minister Kan to be capable of triggering an even greater nuclear disaster than the one at Fukushima on March 11th. In advance, Chubu Electric has already decided to decommission Hamaoka’s Unit 1 & 2 rather than bear the huge costs of ‘beefing up’ their earthquake-resistance, and has postponed the construction of a sixth reactor.
CORE’s spokesman Martin Forwood said today:
‘The closure of Hamaoka, and Japan’s rethink on MOX fuel may have signed the death warrant for SMP’s revival and consign the wretched plant to the great white elephant grave yard where it belongs. If SMP’s trial run for Chubu’s Hamaoka plant does not go ahead, there’s little chance that other utilities will either be willing or in a position to plug the gap given the official and public mauling they are getting from all quarters in Japan over the future use of MOX fuel in their reactors’.
The re-assessment of Hamaoka’s seismic safety is expected to take at least three years and will include not only the reactors’ ability to withstand Magnitude 8 earthqaukes but also the longer-term measure of constructing a coastal levee capable of standing up to a 12 metre tsunami wave – a measure unlikely to appease local communities who have dubbed the plant ‘the most dangerous atomic facility in the quake-prone archipelago’.
SMP was opened in 2002 with the capacity to produce 120 tonnes of MOX fuel per year for THORP’s overseas customers. During the 9-year period of operation prior to its shut-down last summer for repair, the plant produced no more than 15 tonnes of MOX fuel in total, at an estimated overall cost of over £1Bn. A call for the plant and its costs to be investigated has recently been made to the UK’s National Audit Office. SMP’s current overhaul at Japanese expense and with French technical know-how will include the replacement of much of its failed production line.