Living up to its white elephant reputation, THORP faces yet another crisis in the form of who’ll be paying the conservatively estimated £50M costs of the leak accident which will have kept the plant closed for two years. THORP is owned by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) and operated under contract by British Nuclear Group (BNG).
Reprocessing customers from Germany filed a writ at the High Court in London on 20th October 2006, seeking to prevent BNG from charging them, under their service agreements (the contracts) for the costs of the THORP accident, including the £500,000 fine and costs handed down by Carlisle Crown Court in October last year following the Health & Safety Executive’s prosecution. Figures in the writ reveal some of the huge increase in THORP’s spiralling costs now being forced on to customers.
In parallel with BNG’s actions, THORP owner NDA is also claiming for the accident costs – from its own insurers Hinton Insurance Limited, an “off-shore” company originally wholly owned by BNFL. Transferred to the NDA on 1st April 2005, Hinton’s funds are understood to be Government sourced via state-owned nuclear companies and any successful claim therefore paid from the public purse. In contrast, THORP’s former owners British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL) has confirmed that, in the past, where an incident was caused by its own fault or neglect, no insurance claim was made.
CORE’s Martin Forwood commented today: “Welcome to the fantasy world of Sellafield where the owners and the operators of THORP are jointly claiming the accident costs – but from different sources. Who other than this hapless pair could have concocted such a bizarre and devious double-whammy that will fleece both the customer and the taxpayer for the same accident”.
In the 42 page German writ which CORE has obtained, customers have been warned by BNG that the work that should have been done by THORP in its first ten years of operation (the baseload) will now take over 15 years to complete – with a consequential increase in costs which they intend to pass on to all customers. Disputing the threat, the customers writ points out that much of the time extension and increased costs resulting from the accident were self-inflicted by BNG through its own negligence at THORP. They cite not only BNG’s breaches of site licence conditions (to which BNG had already pleaded guilty at Carlisle) but also additional breaches of contract conditions in that it had failed in its duty of care to design, construct, operate and/or maintain THORP to the standard reasonably expected by a reasonably competent operator.
The current sledge-hammer approach to customer relations by BNG is in stark contrast to the line previously adopted by BNFL under chairman Christoher Harding who advocated that adding indiscriminately to already high prices on existing contracts was a doubtful negotiating position from which to win new business, and that the company ‘needs to negotiate changes in charges with customers rather than simply impose them’.
Martin Forwood added: “The clear disdain for its customers shows how BNG has now abandoned any pretence that it might secure further business from them. This, together with the questionable insurance set-up provides an insight into not only the murky world of Sellafield’s commercial operations but also into THORP’s worsening operational and financial problems. There is no longer any justification for resuscitating this terminally ill plant and we’ll be calling again for its immediate and permanent closure”.
Notes for Editors.
i) The claimants named in the German writ are the power stations at Brokdorf and Grohnde, and the E.oN utility which part-owns both. The power stations contracted in the early 1980’s to have some 130 tonnes of fuel reprocessed at THORP.
ii) Opened in 1994, THORP should have reprocessed 7000 tonnes of spent fuel by 2004 – the first ten year ‘baseload’ period whose order book included 2673 tonnes from Japan, 1872 tonnes from Europe (Germany 969 tonnes) and the balance from UK power stations. At the plant’s accident closure in April 2005, THORP had reprocessed 5729 tonnes, with the outstanding balance of some 1250 tonnes now projected by BNG to be completed by 2009 at the earliest.
iii) On the 10th January 2007, the HSE confirmed that it had given approval for the re-start of THORP, as all repair work had been completed to its satisfaction. in response, the NDA has confirmed that despite the HSE approval there was still no formal timetable for THORP’s re-start.
iv) The name of Hinton Insurance Limited, as principle insurers, was obtained by CORE from the NDA under a Freedom of Information request.