Commercial reprocessing at Dounreay (1)
01 January 1991
Commercial reprocessing at Dounreay
artdoc May=1992
Northern European Nuclear Information Group (NENIG)
February 1990
Up until this year, the nuclear work carried out at Dounreay
by the UKAEA was related to the British fast reactor research
programme. This programme was funded by the British
Government, and from the huge sums of money spent on it over
the years, is was clear that the researchers were not limited
in their work by financial constraints.
When it became clear last year that the fast breeder programme
was no longer to have access to unlimited public funding, the
UKAEA started to look for commercial work to keep the plant in
operation. Initially this work was mostly using their
engineering expertise, and on such matters as helping the oil
industry to clean radioactive contamination off their
equipment. However, such work was not enough to satisfy their
needs, and they have now taken the much more worrying step of
moving into the commercial reprocessing business, with the
signing of two contracts to reprocess spent fuel from the West
German nuclear industry. This contract will be carried out in
their existing research reprocessing plant, (a small version
of the EDRP).
Shetland Campaign Against Dounreay Expansion, (CADE), have been
trying to find out more details of the two contracts. The
contracts have been signed with a West German firm, KfK, and
are to reprocess fuel pins which have been irradiated in the
Phoenix Reactor, (the Fast Breeder Reactor in France); and to
reprocess an experimental fuel, a mixture of enriched uranium
and plutonium, which had been irradiated at the Dounreay Fast
Reactor, before being returned to KfK.
The UKAEA have however refused to tell CADE how much fuel is
to be reprocessed, how the fuel will be transported to Dounreay
from West Germany, how long the reprocessing products and waste
will remain at Dounreay, and how they will be transported back
to West Germany. In addition, the UKAEA refuse to say what
discharges to the sea will result from the reprocessing of this
fuel, saying only that the discharges will be within their
permitted limits. These limits were set some years ago, when
the reprocessing plant was even dirtier than it now is, and
when large discharges to the sea were permitted, so the fact
that the new discharges are within these permitted limits is
not reassuring.
It is likely that these two contracts are for relatively small,
quantities of fuel, but the refusal of the UKAEA to say what
they are doing suggests that they do not want to set the
precedent of being open about what they are doing, so that they
can hide the magnitude of large contracts which they hope to
win in the future.
This move into commercial reprocessing is very worrying. It
could mean that the existing plant will not be closed down in
the mid 1990's as the Government announced last year, but will
instead continue to discharge radioactive material into the sea
for many years to come. It could also mean that the plant
could be enlarged, and that discharges would then greatly
increase. The granting of planning consent for the EDRP makes
it more likely that planning consent would be given to other
new reprocessing plants.