Reading the Entrails (1)

May 29th, 2008

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Posted by ChrisG at 8:56 am

In today’s Guardian, news of the busted flush that is Sellafield. A crucial part of the British nuclear industry’s long-term strategy to manage radioactive waste, including spent fuel, the reprocessing plant in Cumbria was meant to ensure that the by-products of nuclear energy production could be used to generate cash that would offset the long-term costs of decommissioning and dealing with waste. However, a new Friends of the Earth report argues that this promise has, as so often with the promises made by supporters of nuclear, turned out to be false.

New evidence concerns the hidden economic costs of the Mox uranium/plutonium fuel plant at the site, which in six years of operation has only produced around 0.72% of the expected yield of reprocessed fuel, and cost nearly twice as much to build as was originally projected. Other failures at the plant have already been made public:

The Mox activities were further discredited when Japan sent back fuel made for it in a demonstration facility because quality-control documents had been falsified. Just the return of the fuel cost the British taxpayer £113m, while the main Mox plant lost £600m by 2004.

Yesterday, we had another reminder about the inaccuracy of estimates surrounding the costs of decommissioning our increasingly knackered fleet of nuclear stations. The problems with using long-range forecasting of future costs as a justification for particular measures in the present are huge, particularly where no-one has any long-term experience of managing the systems whose costs are at issue. This is why arguing for the viability of a new generation of nuclear power with the aid of assurances about the financial securities which will be provided by the private sector (who, let’s not forget, are operating in a largely uninsurable industry), is unlikely to convince anyone – except, it seems, those people who say they are convinced that only “what works” (as opposed to blind ideological commitment) can be a basis for policy.

The decision to waste another enormous pile of money on more nuclear plants was taken earlier this year on the basis of the Government’s sham consultation in 2007. This exercise took place after the original consultation in 2006 was deemed by the High Court to be “very seriously flawed”, “manifestly inadequate”, “seriously misleading” and “wholly insufficient to enable [respondents] to make ‘an intelligent response’”.

Taken together, I’d say that all this provides a very good reason for you, dear reader, to tootle on over here and contribute a signature.