The Royal Society (the UK's national academy of science) has published a highly critical response to the UK government's consultation document on nuclear waste, accusing the government of prioritizing PR activities over tackling the real problems of nuclear waste.

(568.5405) WISE Amsterdam - The Royal Society was responding to the consultation document "Managing Radioactive Waste Safely" (see WISE News Communique 554.5317, "UK: New public consultation on radwaste policy") from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA).

The Royal Society's response was described by the BBC as "a damning indictment of successive governments and the nuclear industry". It describes the problem of disposal of existing waste as "serious and urgent", and says that it must be solved "regardless of whether a new generation of nuclear power stations produces fresh volumes of waste". However, the DEFRA consultation document appears to assume that the main problem is "public presentation and acceptance" rather than the very real technical problems of dealing with radioactive waste.

Badly-managed waste

The UK currently has more than 10,000 tonnes of radioactive waste, and the amount will increase 25-fold once existing nuclear facilities are decommissioned. Despite this huge increase to come, management of existing waste is a shambles. Around 90% of existing high level waste (HLW) and intermediate level waste (ILW) remain in "unconditioned form" - in other words, not yet packaged in a form suitable for long-term storage.

The Magnox waste is a particular problem because it is chemically reactive. It contains metallic uranium, which can spontaneously catch fire if exposed to air, and metallic magnesium, which burns intensely with a blinding white light. The industry says reprocessing is the only way to make Magnox fuel safe, but the Royal Society points out that this in turn generates "highly radioactive and very hazardous liquids, which are energetic and mobile and have a very high natural tendency to disperse". These liquids are stored in tanks at Sellafield, which must be continuously cooled to prevent a serious nuclear accident from occurring.

Vitrification "inevitably produces some liquid effluent which has hitherto been discharged to sea". These discharges are the subject of protests from many countries, including Norway and Ireland. Also the vitrification is so far behind schedule because of a variety of incidents, including fires (see WISE News Communique 541, "In Brief") that reprocessing has at times been delayed (see WISE News Communique 543.5242, "Sellafield: Waste tanks incident").

Use of plutonium or reprocessed uranium in "second cycle fuels" such as MOX would create "still more complicated wastes", and there are "concerns amongst UK scientists" about the disposal of irradiated MOX fuel.

With low-level waste (LLW) and ILW there is also the problem that much of it contains organic matter such as resins, paper or cloth. These eventually generate methane and carbon dioxide, and reactions involving metals will generate hydrogen. All these gases could contain traces of radionuclides and so be radioactive.

Because of these problems, the Royal Society concludes that changes in waste management are essential "regardless of whether a new generation of nuclear power stations generates fresh volumes of waste". The current nuclear waste management regime in the UK "falls short of that which could be achieved through the use of currently available technologies".

To improve this, they propose "BATNEEC" (best available technology not entailing excessive cost). Unfortunately, failing to give a definition of "excessive cost" makes this phrase rather meaningless.

Lack of research

The Royal Society calls for new research, particularly into conditioning nuclear waste into "forms that are passively safe and robustly stored". It is pointed out that there are many different types of nuclear waste, and each type requires a suitable conditioning process. "Unfortunately", the report continues, "the relevant scientific and technological research base has been seriously diminished".

The report proposes more international collaborations, commenting that "an independent report at EU level might be appropriate".

Risks - not just terrorism

After 11 September, "an urgent safety review should take into account the possibility of extreme terrorist intervention". However, terrorists are not the only risk: "The present hazard is real and the risk only maintained at acceptably low levels by very active management systems. These are costly and inevitably bring some risk of worker exposure".

Spin-doctors fail

The government spin-doctors seem to think it is just a case of "managing the debate" rather than finding real solutions. In this, they follow the industry, which according to the report, "seems to have regarded treatment of waste as of secondary importance, and to have focused its efforts on countering what it saw as hostile public opinion and on economic concerns".

However, the Royal Society points out that the nuclear waste issue has been a public relations failure. In particular, the UK nuclear waste agency Nirex "is closely associated with the failed policies of the past." Instead, they support the House of Lords' proposals for a Nuclear Waste Management Commission (see WISE News Communique 508.5004, "UK advice: Underground repository for LLW; excess PU should be classified as waste").

They also foresee that new problems could arise from the splitting off of BNFL's nuclear liabilities into a new Liabilities Management Authority (see WISE News Communique 559.5347, " Full steam ahead for UK's nuclear industry 'Titanic' ", which also appeared in last December's NIRS Nuclear Monitor). The precise role of this new authority is unclear, but there will be "new regulatory interfaces" as responsibility for cleanup of nuclear sites is shifted to the new authority, which "can cause delays and increase costs".

The report finishes with a final warning that the reprocessing industry must not be allowed to dictate nuclear waste policy: "It is essential to ensure that waste disposal decisions and options are not driven exclusively by pre-commitments to upstream production stages, for example the commitment to reprocessing".

Sources: www.royalsoc.ac.uk; BBC, 3 May 2002; DEFRA consultation document (at www.defra.gov.uk/environment/consult/radwaste/pdf/radwaste.pdf)

Contact: Nuclear Free Local Authorities (NFLA)
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The stocks of plutonium and uranium in the UK, mostly kept under guard at Sellafield, are no longer the valued national asset we have always been led to believe. They will not keep the lights on for a century or two, but are a liability which will cost the taxpayer billions.

These facts are buried deep in the long-awaited document Managing Radioactive Waste Safely, which the government slipped out the day after New York was hit by terrorists. The document had been held up more than a year while the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) and the old Department of Environment squabbled over whether to finally admit that plutonium, once regarded as the world's most valuable substance, was really a nuclear waste. The issue was fudged because ministers could not agree on this fateful step, but the facts in the document speak for themselves. Britain's 61.5 tonnes of plutonium is decaying and becoming more dangerous and will cost billions to process in a safe form for disposal.

British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL), the government-owned company that runs the Sellafield complex in Cumbria and guards the stockpile, still claims that the plutonium and 60,000 tonnes of uranium is an energy resource that could be used for fuel in nuclear reactors.

After 50 years, the fact that the DTI still encourages BNFL to propagate the pipe dream that plutonium is untapped energy is a reminder that the same industry claimed nuclear power would produce electricity too cheap to meter. No government has ever been willing to stand up to the nuclear industry and spell out the facts.

But the new document is much more revealing. It says that there is so much plutonium and uranium in store that not enough reactors could be safely or economically adapted to burn it, even if it was the wish of the reactor owners to do so. It adds that 90% of the plutonium and uranium stockpile is useless, and that it would be folly to add to the problem by continuing to produce more. Despite this, BNFL continues to do exactly that.

The problem for ministers is that, if they admit this is true, the whole economics of the nuclear industry and the way it operates will have to change. Admitting that plutonium and uranium are a liability makes BNFL bankrupt. It would also cause the closure of the prestige Thorp reprocessing works at Sellafield which employs 2,600 people.

This conclusion is bad enough for the government in financial terms, but the politics are tricky too. The renewed interest by ministers in promoting more nuclear power does not sit well with these facts. It would confirm that Britain's energy policy is still anchored in the thinking of the mid-20th century, when we were intent on building more and more power stations without any thought for the future. In those days, it was justified by the need for an independent nuclear weapon. Now the justification is that nuclear power does not produce greenhouse gas emissions, and we need security of energy supply, which does not force us to depend on unreliable gas pipelines operated by foreigners.

According to the document, 90% of the plutonium stored at Sellafield comes from the old Magnox reactors. Since the plutonium was no longer needed for new bombs, it was diverted to be used in a civil fast breeder reactor programme. These burn plutonium fuel and, in theory, produce oodles of electricity. But fast breeders have long been abandoned on cost and safety grounds. The only remaining use for the plutonium is to mix it with uranium and burn it in conventional reactors. But this is more costly than conventional uranium fuel derived from ore and has been rejected for use in Britain as uneconomic by both BNFL and British Energy (BE) - the privatised arm of the nuclear industry - for their own UK reactors.

The only alternative is to export the British plutonium to other countries in the form of this mixed fuel, known as MOX. But even before the terrorist attack on New York, moving it around would be a hard trade to negotiate in an unsafe world.

Just as disturbing, the document reveals that, even if there were a market, there are additional technical difficulties. The natural decay of plutonium into a more radioactive substance called americium-241 means that it would need cleaning up before it could be used. The document says that one-third of the stockpile is already unusable because of this. Another 10% is contaminated by chemicals and, additionally, would have to be cleaned up.

Yet ministers hesitate to declare plutonium a waste, because it would cause a critical financial problem. The report says "it would have significant financial implications for the owners of the plutonium. The liability would fall on the taxpayer." Accurate costings are not available, the document says, but "are likely to be of the order of billions of pounds". And that is only for one-third of the plutonium. The cost implications of dealing with the rest of it and 60,000 tonnes of surplus uranium do not rate a mention.

One of the problems the government admits to is that, in order to immobilise the plutonium to avoid it being used for nuclear bombs, it would have to be mixed with other dangerous wastes. Making the plutonium very difficult to handle would have a deterrent effect. This cocktail would then be placed in glass blocks for storage and eventual disposal.

This glass-block process is currently used at Sellafield to deal with high-level wastes from reprocessing spent fuel, but is currently not working because of technical problems. This causes a backlog of waste from normal operations. It would have to be entirely revamped to take in the extra plutonium.

Despite this avalanche of facts, the document reaches no conclusions, merely asking for public comment, which will be followed by consultation on a timetable which runs to 2007.

Successive governments have sought to avoid making tough decisions about the nuclear industry, but the signs are that New Labour will not get away with it this time.

While BNFL insists that plutonium and uranium are a potential asset, BE takes a different view. BE runs the eight newer, advanced gas cooled reactors and the single pressurised water reactor Sizewell B, and is struggling to make a profit in a competitive electricity market. The company was signed up to have its fuel reprocessed at Sellafield years before it was privatised. Now BE is paying for it, because reprocessing is far more expensive than the alternative of storing fuel. The company is squealing because it is no longer a subsidised public utility and could go bust.

It comments to the review that if plutonium was declared a waste "it would be nonsensical for BE to continue with reprocessing and creation of further liability".

The costs imposed by BNFL on BE are squeezing the company and its shareholders hard. BE is already lobbying ministers because of the financial problems this is causing.

Meanwhile, at Sellafield, costs continue to rise as both reprocessing works and management of waste streams fail to meet production targets. The fact that BNFL's nuclear liabilities far exceed its assets cannot be hidden from the public forever. Soon these nuclear myths will be exploded.

Managers of the nuclear industry's waste disposal agency have admitted suppressing scientific information and misrepresenting research findings.

A highly critical internal report concedes that a culture of secrecy operated within Nirex which bred public hostility. Incomplete data were released and the state-run body admits the case for a deep waste store at Sellafield "was not as good as implied by public statements made by Nirex."

The agency decided to investigate itself after widespread public criticism and the unexpected refusal by the last Tory government to approve a new waste store. The findings triggered calls last night for Nirex to be made independent of the rest of the nuclear industry.

The Labour MP for West Bromwich East, Tom Watson, got the report into the public domain after tabling a parliamentary question.

Mr Watson said: "What the old school of Nirex management got up to was a scandal. They operated in a culture of secrecy that was unacceptable and openness is the only way forward. Nirex needs to be made independent of the rest of the nuclear industry as a matter of urgency."

The agency, responsible for storing waste generated by Britain's nuclear reactors, had been accused of fiddling figures to show it was safer than it really was.

The report concludes that that allegation, and another allegation that directors had been misled, were unfounded. But it substantiates claims from Friends of the Earth that pressure was put on the government's pollution inspectorate not to release information.

Mark Johnston, Friends of the Earth's nuclear spokesman, said: "They have had an appalling history. They will struggle to lift themselves above their zero credibility. The last 10 years of Nirex underlines the need for an independent radioactive waste agency."

Nirex hopes to draw a line in the sand with the report and, by being more open, improve public confidence.

Nirex's corporate communications head, David Wild, said yesterday: "As we look ahead to the future, the waste exists, there's a massive legacy. As a society we have to ask how to deal with it and transparency must be central to that"

The report was overseen by Lynda Warren, professor of environmental law at the University of Wales, who was critical of the agency's excessive secrecy. "The main result was the creation of an 'us and them' culture in which Nirex was not trusted by those outside the organisation and individual members of staff were not trusted internally," she said.

Chris Murray will never forget the moment his company was banished to the wilderness. As managing director of Nuclear Waste Management Company Nirex, he was at company headquarters in Harwell when, at 11.20am on March 17 1997, his boss broke the shocking news to him.

The Conservative Environment Secretary, John Gummer, had turned down plans to build a test site for a deep underground store at Sellafield in Cumbria.

Until then Nirex had been at the very centre of Britain's nuclear industrial strategy.

Murray says: "It was devastating. It was the first time that the nuclear industry had lost a planning inquiry. And it resulted in a total loss of confidence in Nirex as a company."

Nirex did not die - it's knowledge base was too valuable for that - but its influence in industry, in policy, in Whitehall and Westminster ended. It became an undead company.

The cautionary tale of Nirex shows what happens when science overtakes government and public opinion, and when political and company objectives become entangled. It is a story which ministers - scarred from the GM foods, BSE and British Nuclear Fuels controversies - recognise only too well.

Now, three years later, Nirex may return from the twilight zone. The question is, how quickly and in what form?

Environment Minister Michael Meacher is planning a consultation on how to re-open the issue: it was due early this year - but delayed, with rumours it may be pushed back to the autumn.

The Government and Nirex have to first win back public confidence. Next it is vital to convince politicians of the urgent need for new policy. The half-lives of some of the radioactive materials involved are one million years. What is a month here and there, they - and you - may ask?

Charles Curtis, chairman of the Radioactive Waste Management Advisory Committee, established by the government in 1978, believes a decision is vital soon. “It is in the interest of the public and of public finances to put in place permanent arrangements. There is a great deal of waste which is being dealt with in a temporary and costly manner.”

And, as a House of Lords Science and Technology Committee report pointed out last year: “The long time-scale might be thought to be a reason for postponing decisions. But the contrary is the case, since existing storage arrangements have a limited life and will require replacement.”

The Lords also pointed out the flaws in the 'fragmentation' of nuclear waste policy: disposal is messy and dangerous, and the categorisation is complicated.

In April 1994 the UK's inventory showed a total of 71,000 cubic metres of waste - in addition to plutonium and uranium stocks, currently not classed as waste. This is divided into three categories. High-level waste (HLW), which needs active cooling for 50 years before it can be disposed of, makes up 2.3 per cent of the volume but 90 per cent of the total radioactivity. Intermediate-level waste (ILW) makes up 86.6 per cent of the inventory, and contains most of the remaining radioactivity. Low- level waste (LLW) is 11.1 per cent in volume.

These wastes are stored at or near British Nuclear Fuels' Sellafield site and at the UK Atomic Energy Authority's Dounreay site in Scotland.

Fragmentation of waste reflects the haphazard evolution of policy and of the institutions designed to deal with it. The problem was not really addressed until 1976, with a report by the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution. In 1982 Nuclear Industry Radioactive Waste Management Executive was created. It was renamed Nirex in 1985 and placed on a commercial footing.

Nirex's remit increased the fragmentation - it was given responsibility only for ILW and some LLW.

Nirex faced a series of further problems, regarding disposal sites. Two alternatives were chosen - a near-surface store for shorter-lived LLW and ILW, and a deep site in a disused ICI mine for longer- term ILW. ICI faced local opposition and withdrew its offer.

Nirex was then told in 1984 to explore three sites for a near-surface store, and three for a deep one. In 1987 the Government scrapped plans for a near-surface site. In 1992 Nirex revealed plans for an underground laboratory, called a rock characterisation facility, or RCF, to test geology for a deep repository at Sellafield in Cumbria. There was a storm of protest from residents and environmental campaigners. In 1997 a Government Inspector turned down the application. He stated that the choice of Sellafield for the RCF had not been made objectively, that it was premature, and that more needed to be known about the geology of the site.

In short, a decision which had been taken behind closed doors by scientists blew up in their face.

Nirex has taken the intervening three years to come to terms with this decision.

Key to the problem was Nirex's public awareness. Murray says the only people who thought the issue at hand was a test laboratory were Nirex. The rest of the world saw it as a Trojan horse for a waste dump.

Following the planning refusal, the company cut staff from 230 to 67, slashed its spending from £50 million a year to £11m and became little more than a think-tank on waste disposal issues. It continues to approve packaging processes, carried out by BNFL and UKAEA.

Nirex was hammered from all sides. Its shareholders, BNFL, UKAEA, British Energy and the Government, complained that £500m had been wasted.

The public, media and academics all dug in. Murray says: “Many were delighted that an institution like Nirex had been turned over. Some thought we deserved it.”

It is tempting to ask Murray and his advisers whether they did anything right.
Nirex admits Nirex was part of the problem, that there was a lack of openness in the decision-making, that it was rushed and, that there was no clear 'road map' outlining key destinations.

One problem which goes to the heart of Nirex's difficulties was 'retrievability'. On the one hand, there was concern that burying waste in a deep store and backfilling it forever meant a decision on where to site a store could never be reversed. So the community there would be living on top of a 'dump'.

But on the other hand, allowing retrievability - at least for the three to four hundred years it would take to settle the current inventory - meant human error or terrorism entered the equation.

This is one of the key issues the government will have to deal with once the consulta tion takes place. Murray, sensitive to public pressure, is now calling for a complete revision of all storage options - including formerly discounted ones such as sea-bed disposal and space disposal.

He is also calling for more public awareness in the decision-making process. The composition of Nirex itself will be a key part of the Government's plans.

Should Nirex be given responsibility for all nuclear waste? Should it be owned by BNFL, UKAEA and British Energy, all of whom produce waste, and have vested interests in its disposal? What form should Nirex take to carry the waste responsibility into the future, and how will it maintain records over that time?

Murray is not prepared to comment prematurely. He, like Meacher, the Environment Minister, cannot afford to get it wrong again.