Just one week after the Government’s National Audit Office (NAO) published its damning report on the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) and the state of ageing facilities at Sellafield, the NDA is preparing to ship a consignment of high risk (Category 1) plutonium MOX fuel from the port of Workington to Germany on board its ship Atlantic Osprey within the next few days.
Had the remit of the NAO’s report extended to the NDA’s ships and the sea transport of nuclear materials, this imminent shipment of dangerous plutonium MOX fuel to Europe on a ship that lacks full safety/security assets and has passed its operational sell-by date, could have been similarly condemned.
The imminent MOX shipment from Workington – the last to be made from Sellafield to any overseas customer – will consist of 8 MOX fuel assemblies destined for Germany’s Grohnde nuclear power station. Containing some 132kg of plutonium, the fuel assemblies were produced at Sellafield’s disgraced and now defunct MOX plant (SMP). It will be the second MOX shipment made to Grohnde by the Atlantic Osprey this year, the first being made in mid-September via the German port of Nordenham where, on entering port, it met with active opposition from Greenpeace inflatables and further onshore demonstrations by other German anti-nuclear groups.
The Atlantic Osprey, built in 1986, is a roll-on roll-off ferry purchased third hand by British Nuclear Fuels plc (BNFL) in 2001. Of the UK’s fleet of designated nuclear cargo ships, the Atlantic Osprey is the only ship not to be custom-built and is now past the age when its sister ships have historically been laid-up and scrapped (at or before 25 years’service) by ship managers International Nuclear Services (INS), a subsidiary company of the NDA.
CORE’s spokesman Martin Forwood said; “This old converted car ferry, which lacks the safety and security attributes of other nuclear cargo carriers, represents the maritime equivalent of the land-based facilities so criticised by the NAO last week. Carrying its cargo of dangerous plutonium fuel and navigating the busy North Sea shipping lanes, the Atlantic Opsrey presents an equally ‘intolerable risk’ as anything identified by the NAO at Sellafield”.
A 2010 INS assessment of the Atlantic Osprey conceded ‘a reduced ‘public acceptance and political credibility’ of transporting Category 1 nuclear material on the ship, and admits that reservations about the Atlantic Osprey’s continued use for Category 1 cargoes had been expressed by France’s safety authority.
With some 3 tonnes of plutonium and a volume of vitrified High Level Waste still to be returned to German utilities under the terms of their reprocessing contracts with Sellafield’s THORP plant, the utilities’ frought dealings with Sellafield still have some way to run. THORP’s poor performance, coupled with the kind of inept management described in the NAO report, has resulted in significant delays to the completion of reprocessing contracts and considerable additional costs being foisted on German customers