Nuclear power & the Nordic Council, Feb 1990
01 January 1991
Nuclear power & the Nordic Council, Feb 1990
artdoc May=1992
Northern European Nuclear Information Group (NENIG)
February 1990
SPECIAL NENIG BRIEFING FOR NORDIC COUNCIL MEETING IN FEBRUARY
1990
In this Briefing we provide a summary of the main developments
in the British Nuclear Industry, particularly those with the
potential to threaten the wellbeing of the nations and
communities of the Northern North Sea and the North Atlantic.
DOUNREAY AND THE E.D.R.P. - THE PLANNING POSITION
In October 1989, the Secretary for State for Scotland, Mr
Malcolm Rifkind, gave outline planning consent to the
U.K.Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA), to allow them to construct
the European Demonstration Reprocessing Plant: (EDRP) at
Dounreay. This is the large reprocessing plant which the UKAEA
want to build to allow them to reprocess spent nuclear fuel
from the European Fast Breeder Reactor Programme.
The announcement of the granting of outline planning consent
for the EDRP caused some confusion in the Nordic Countries,
where the announcement last year by the British Government that
they planned to run down the fast reactor programme at
Dounreay, and to close it by the mid 1990's, had been taken as
a sign that the EDRP was no longer required.
The position is that Mr Rifkind's decision would permit the
building of the EDRP at Dounreay, should the partners in the
European collaboration on the fast reactor programme decide
that they needed a large reprocessing plant. What is does not
mean is that the EDRP will necessarily be built, or that, if
it is built, it will be built at Dounreay.
The European collaboration is in a state of confusion, the
French fast reactor has not been a success, and the Dounreay
reactor is currently planned to be closed down, so the threat
of the EDRP being built at Dounreay is not an immediate threat.
However, the fast breeder programme may come back into favour,
and the EDRP could still be built sometime in the mid 1990's
or later. NENIG believes that the nuclear industry will
continue to fight to have the fast breeder programme
reinstated, and that its reinstatement is a real possibility,
so we believe that international opposition to the EDRP at
Dounreay should continue, until Britain agrees to withdraw the
planning consent.
DOUNREAY AND THE E.D.R.P. - MR RIFKIND'S DECISION
In making his decision to grant the EDRP outline planning
consent, Mr Rifkind ignored several of the recommendations of
his Inquiry Reporter, Mr Bell, who headed the Public Inquiry
into the planning application.
Even though the Public Inquiry was severely restricted in the
range of evidence it could examine, (for example, it could not
look at the international effects of the EDRP), Mr Bell still
came up with several recommendations unfavourable to the
Nuclear Industry.
For example, at the Inquiry, the Joint Islands Councils of
Shetland, Orkney and the Western Isles, who opposed the EDRP,
argued strongly that the monitoring of the environment around
Dounreay, for traces of radioactive contamination) must be
carried out by independent scientists, and not by the UKAEA who
carry out this work just now. Mr Bell supported this in his
report, but Mr Rifkind overruled him. We believe that to leave
the vital matter of the monitoring of the Nuclear Industry in
its own hands, seriously undermines its value.
Mr Bell also stated that there was cause for concern over the
matter of whether or not the existing Dounreay reprocessing
plant, and the much larger reprocessing plant at Sellafield,
were responsible for the high levels of leukaemia in the areas
surrounding the two plants. He recommended that no decision
in favour of the EDRP be made until the investigation into
these leukaemia clusters by the Committee Oh Medical Aspects
of Radiation in the Environment, (COMARE) had been completed,
and its second report had been published and considered.
This report was pub