Today’s announcement by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority to allow the Sellafield MOX Plant (SMP) to complete its current MOX fuel manufacturing campaign has been compared by CORE to giving the kiss of life to a corpse.
CORE’s spokesman Martin Forwood said “ This is the plant that has lost at least £626M in its short seven year life, that has been forced to sub-contract orders to European rivals and, this year, will struggle to achieve even 5 percent of its original design production target. For the NDA to say the continued operation of this wretched plant represents the best value for taxpayers simply does not wash and makes even voodoo economics look respectable. Most taxpayers would prefer the NDA to concentrate on its original remit of cleaning up 50 years of nuclear industry mess rather than pour more money down the plughole of this failed plutonium fuel production plant.”
Using a mix of plutonium and uranium, SMP was designed to fabricate 120 tonnes of mixed oxide (MOX) fuel each year – equivalent to 200 or more MOX fuel assemblies, depending on the overseas reactor type the fuel was destined for. The last independent review of SMP was carried out in 2006 by NDA commissioned consultants Arthur D Little. They reported that after repeated equipment failures and production bottlenecks, SMP faced the prospect of fully automatic operation being only a remote possibility, that its production capacity had been downgraded from 120 tonnes to 40 tonnes per year, and that the plant’s net value had been seriously eroded.
Work on the ‘current MOX fuel manufacturing campaign’, for German utility EoN’s Grohnde nuclear power station started in early 2007. Over 2 years later, only 8 MOX fuel assemblies had been completed. These were due to be shipped to Germany in September but the transport, from the Port of Workington onboard the ship Atlantic Osprey, was postponed at Germany’s request. Reasons for the postponement are understood to include concerns about the arrival in Germany of such a controversial cargo coinciding with the German national election, and the refusal of the port of Cuxhaven to allow the import of the MOX fuel.
Government go-ahead for SMP in 2001 was based largely on Sellafield (BNFL) assurances that major orders for MOX fuel would be secured from Japanese power stations. Not one single order from Japan has yet been secured and, with the country building its own MOX plant, no orders are likely to be forthcoming. Whilst SMP’s meagre order book has been kept secret, it is known that the plant had originally secured contracts with Switzerland, Sweden and a number of German nuclear power stations. NDA and industry documents show MOX orders not only for Grohnde, but also for the Brokdorf, Gundremmingen, Isar, Neckarwestheim and Krummel nuclear power stations – some also owned by Eon. Whilst documents in CORE’s possession show the size of orders and delivery dates, some will already have had to be subcontracted to its European rivals and others, as a result of SMP’s chronic performance, are ‘well past their sell-by date’ and impossible to achieve.