Nuclear-waste burial plans on seabed sound alarm bells

Press, 17 December 1988, Page 22

Nuclear-waste burial plans on seabed sound alarm bells

New attempts are being made to tackle a menace that has been growing steadily throughout Britain for 30 years. Nuclear engineers are pondering ways to deal with mounting dumps of radioactive waste, the product of British atomic reactors.

The problem is fast becoming a crisis, say the nuclear industry’s many opponents. Privately, some senior managers in the industry agree. Nuclear waste disposal in Britain is in a grim state, they concede.

Tens of thousands of cubic feet of intensely radioactive waste, highly toxic debris that will still be active in 25,000 years, have already been produced in Britain. In addition, thousands of tonnes of less intensely radioactive materials now await disposal. Nuclear waste poses a serious environmental hazard. However, plans to get rid of it on land, by burying it, have been continually thwarted by local opposition. Now, engineers are pinning their hopes on dumping nuclear waste in the seabed round the coast of Britain, particularly near Sellafield and Dounreay, and possibly in other parts of the world. The idea — like most others concerned with the nuclear industry — is controversial. Other

ROBIN McKIE

and MARK NEW-

HAM report on plans to bury highly toxic debris on the seabed.

nations, such as Ireland, who might be recipients of unwelcome nuclear waste on their shores look askance at the scheme.

The idea is also anathema to environmentalists. “Of course something must be done with the nuclear waste that has already been produced,” says Kerry Chester of Friends of the Earth. “However, until the technology for placing it in the seabed has been shown to be completely feasible and watertight, we cannot start putting it where it is difficult to monitor or retrieve.” Not surprisingly, the nuclear industry does not agree. It points to a study put together by a group of research agencies on behalf of the European Community that concludes that seabed disposal is “radiologically a very safe option.” “We do not expect that further research can drastically modify our results,” the study says. “Subsea disposal of high-level waste can be considered a realistic option.” A study by the National Radiological Protection Board backs this claim.

One far more worrying question remains. Why has Britain taken no firm action on nuclear waste disposal three decades after it helped pioneer nuclear power? It is more than a decade ago since a commission on environmental pollution, chaired by Lord Flowers, warned: “We think that quite inadequate attention has been given to the matter of nuclear waste disposal and we find this more surprising in view of the large nuclear programmes that are envisaged for the coming decades.” For 10 years, no successful action has been taken to deal with the problem of nuclear waste. At the same time, dumps have been growing, mainly at atomic power stations where cooling ponds of water are today filled with crates of spent fuel rods from Magnox and advanced gascooled reactors. In addition, reactors themselves have been ageing, approaching the day when they must be dismantled and homes found for their highly radioactive components.

“The trouble is that there have been so many political changes regarding the nuclear industry that nobody now has a clear idea what policy should be adopted on waste disposal,” says nuclear analyst Walt Patterson. “At the same time, stockpiles of the stuff are growing all the time.”

One particular problem involves the reprocessing of highlevel wastes, a task currently carried out at Sellafield.

Reprocessing is done to remove plutonium from spent fuel, a procedure that only intensifies the production of nuclear debris. In the case of the high-level waste, this comes in the form of an intensely radioactive liquid that is particularly difficult to handle.

Yet all this waste is produced to extract plutonium that has only two possible uses: as fuel for Britain’s now moribund fast breeder reactor programme and for nuclear warheads.

For its part, the nuclear industry has not been short of ideas. Unfortunately, almost every move it has made has been thwarted by a public that year by year seems to grow increasingly hostile to the concept of atomic power. Repeatedly, the official nuclear waste disposal agency Nirex has been blocked by pro-

testers as it has investigated sites for burying waste, despite protestations by director Maurice Ginniff that such disposal is “environmentally sound and socially responsible.” As a result, nuclear engineers have turned beyond Britain’s shores for a solution.

Essentially, seabed schemes fall into three basic categories — penetrators, boreholes and repositories. The first two are designed to deal with high level waste, the last with low and intermediate.

In the case of the repository, a service life of 50 years is envisaged. Drilled into hard rock, a maze of caverns would be created under the seabed, a task equivalent to constructing the Channel Tunnel.

According to Harold Beale, technical manager at Nirex, the price of such a subsea repository would be “three to four times that of a repository on land,” an extra cost that would be borne by the electricity consumer.

As for the other schemes, the technology exists or can be developed, say engineers. The obvious problems are risk of accidents or sabotage during container transport. In general, the price of seabed disposal appears to be high but

bearable. The political cost, however, remains unknown. All that is really needed is an acknowledgement by Government and country that something must be done about nuclear waste — quickly. Copyright London Observer