Local group CORE (Cumbrians Opposed to a Radioactive Environment) has learned from an unamed source at the plant that the Sellafield MOX Plant (SMP) has come close to losing its initial MOX fuel contract because the agreed delivery date can no longer be met.
The loss of SMP’s first contract would be acutely embarrassing for BNFL in terms of destroying customer confidence, and wiping as much as £20M from the order book of an already loss-making plant(i). These consequences were spelled out in detail by the UK government before the International Tribunal of the Sea in Hamburg in November 2001 when defending against the Irish Government’s challenge on SMP. The Tribunal was told that the loss of the first contract could lead to the loss of the second and even the third contract for SMP.
Support for the claim that the contract is indeed in trouble comes today in BNFL’s confirmation to the Indpendent on Sunday’s journalist Geoffrey Lean that the first shipment of MOX fuel will not now take place until 2004. – one year later than BNFL had previously forecast.
A CORE spokesperson said today “ BNFL continues to flog a dead horse with this unjustified plutonium plant which has now failed its first commercial test. . Customers must be wondering if their other contracts are at all safe in BNFL’s hands or whether they should move their business elsewhere “.
CORE’s spokesperson pointed out that if the first order has indeed conveniently been ‘re-arranged’ rather than lost, the deliberate warnings given by BNFL(ii) and Government to the public and the Hamburg Tribunal about delays leading to contract loss appear to have been at best unfounded, and at worst a disingenuous ploy to speed up the earliest opening of SMP.
Last year BNFL had promised that delivery of SMP’s first contract for MOX fuel was expected to have been completed by Spring this year. Delivery to the Swiss power station at Beznau, operated by Nordostschweizerische Kraftwerke (NOK), was to be via the port of Workington and by the unarmed BNFL ship Atlantic Osprey – and timed for loading into the Swiss reactors during their annual ‘outages’ this summer in June and July.
Progress in SMP since it opened in December 2001 has already been described by BNFL as ‘slower than anticipated’. In December 2002 the Sellafield Local Liaison Committee was told that commissioning of the plant had not progressed beyond completing one batch of MOX fuel pellets, with the further stages of fuel pin filling and fuel assembly production still to be undertaken.
CORE added “ This MOX mess vindicates the international opposition to the operation of SMP. Importantly, with the increasing threat of terrorism, it gives us at least another year to continue pressuring for a total ban on plutonium shipments In particular, BNFL’s plan to use the insecure port of Workington and the ro-ro cargo vessel Atlantic Osprey which lacks even the most basic safety features for transporting nuclear weapons- useable material.(iii) must be abandoned “.
A further setback for SMP emerged last week when the nuclear industry’s journal Nuclear Fuel reported serious conflict between BNFL and its overeseas reprocessing customers over BNFL’s attempts to impose cost rises to their contracts for having reactor fuel dealt with at Sellafield’s THORP reprocessing plant.
Customers, including German utility E.ON Energie who only nine months ago agreed to have all its future plutonium from THORP converted to MOX fuel in SMP(iv), are threatening that if BNFL continues to press for more money, they will commit the fuel to storage at their power stations rather than send it to Sellafield for conversion. The loss of this future business would be another major setback for SMP’s orderbook.
Notes for editors:
(i) The ‘Net Positive Value’ of SMP was assessed by Government in 2001 to be around £199M The assessment ignored the plant’s construction costs of £470M which were treated as ‘sunk costs’. Properly included, the construction costs would make SMP a £270M loss-maker.
(ii) During the prolonged public consultations on SMP in 2001, BNFL had repeatedly stressed that delays to opening the plant could cost them the initial contracts. This warning was taken further by Government consultants Arthur D Little who had assessed BNFL’s economic case for SMP. They confirmed that there was a ‘significant’ chance of the first contract being lost not only if Government approval for SMP was delayed but also if problems arose with commissioning the plant.
(iii )Because of its plutonium fissile component, MOX fuel is categorised by the IAEA as Category 1 material requiring stringent security and safety measures for its transport. Unlike the armed ships BNFL used for a MOX delivery to Japan, the Atlantic Osprey is unarmed, single-hulled and has one engine.
(iv) E.ON’s order for SMP is estimated as representing around 13% of the plant’s order book. Apart from Germany and Switzerland, Sweden is the only other country to have signed a contract.