In response to the admission by British Nuclear Group (BNG) in its 6th December in-house Sellafield Newsletter that THORP is unlikely to re-start either shearing or chemical separation operations until April 2007, CORE calls on the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) to justify re-opening the plant at all after what will amount to a 2 year accident-enforced shut down.
The final and permanent closure of the plant is already scheduled for March 2011 in the NDA’s Lifetime Plan for Sellafield. A plant re-start in April next year would provide a maximum of 4 more years for THORP to fulfil the NDA’s unrealistic projection that all current reprocessing contracts, amounting to almost 4000 tonnes of spent fuel, will be completed by 2011.
CORE’s Martin Forwood said today:
“Every successive delay to re-start makes the prospect of THORP completing all contracts even more remote. The most basic calculation, which takes account of the plant’s poor track record and further restrictions placed on it by the accident, now shows that the crippled plant will fail to honour a significant volume of its outstanding contracts by 2011. The public urgently needs an explanation from the NDA as to how resuscitating this terminally ill plant can any longer be justified “.
In the ten years of operation prior to the April 2005 accident and closure, THORP had reprocessed 5729 tonnes of spent fuel – averaging under 600 tonnes per year. The NDA target (4000 tonnes in 4 years) on re-start requires a rate of 1000 tonnes per year if all contracts are to be completed by 2011– a rate never yet achieved and a feat clearly well beyond THORP’s future ability.
NDA and BNG figures show that current contracts consist of around 800 tonnes of foreign fuel and 3100 tonnes of AGR fuel from UK power stations operated by British Energy (BE). Given the future emphasis on reprocessing foreign fuel which, if left un-reprocessed would prove a major embarrassment to the Government and UK plc, the fall-guy for THORP’s failure will be British Energy’s contracted fuel.
CORE’s calculations show that whilst the foreign fuel is likely to be completed, there will be a failure to honour a majority of BE’s contracted work with the reprocessing of as much as 2000 tonnes of BE fuel having to be abandoned by THORP on its closure in 2011