What a waste: dream of free energy turns into £3bn-a-year public bill (UK)

[struggle4progress]

Terry Macalister
The Guardian,
Thursday May 29 2008

Britain's nuclear complex at Sellafield is Europe's biggest single industrial site and home to what was meant to be a huge fuel reprocessing system that would produce power while reducing the legacy of radioactive waste.

It was built amid enthusiasm that atomic power would be "too cheap to meter" and yet, 52 years on, its catalogue of failures has left it with one of the world's largest stockpiles of plutonium and a bill to the taxpayer of about £3bn a year, a new report says.

Paul Brown, author of Voodoo Economics and the Doomed Nuclear Renaissance, says: "The nuclear dream has turned into an economic and security nightmare for the British taxpayer. The extent of the problems at Sellafield has not been fully explained to the public; nor have the potential knock-on effects for the whole nuclear industry. But research shows the situation is getting rapidly worse."

Details of its failures are kept under wraps by ministers keen to persuade the public that the answer to both energy security and climate change lies in more nuclear plants. Yet it has always been the most expensive way of producing electricity and has been given huge public subsidies, the report argues ...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/may/29/britishenergygroupbusiness.nuclear1

Sellafield's nuclear waste 'more dangerous' than Chernobyl

FRANK McDONALD, Environment Editor

SELLAFIELD HAS the world's biggest stockpile of plutonium and uranium and storage tanks contain highly volatile radioactive waste "more dangerous" than the Chernobyl reactor, according to a study published today.

The study, Voodoo Economics and the Doomed Nuclear Renaissance, also says the British government is now unlikely to meet its 1998 commitment under the Ospar Convention to reduce "close to zero" Sellafield's radioactive discharges into the Irish Sea by 2020.

Compiled for Friends of the Earth by veteran British environmental journalist Paul Brown, the report says the 2012 deadline for closing the Magnox reprocessing facility at Sellafield has now been abandoned and that the Thorp plant will have to remain open until 2015.

The study recalls that Britain's "nuclear recycling centre" has suffered "many near disastrous episodes in its history; but accidents and technical and management failures in the past 10 years have brought this production line of linked nuclear factories to a crisis" ...

http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/frontpage/2008/0529/1212012873606.html

Huge nuclear dump 100 jobs boost
By Staff Reporter
Last updated 12:00, Thursday, 29 May 2008

A HUGE nuclear dump storing thousands of tonnes of radioactive waste in west Cumbria has been recommended for approval at Sellafield ...

Sellafield Ltd want to build the facility to store intermediate level nuclear waste before it is exported to a final permanent repository. An area of around six acres would have to be cleared at Sellafield to make way for the dump.

The move comes at a time when the Government is looking for a site to dig a permanent underground dump to house the UK’s ever-growing stockpile of nuclear waste ...

Sellafield Ltd stated in their applications that the new facility would create around 105 jobs ...

http://www.newsandstar.co.uk/news/1.115003

£73bn cost of nuclear clean-up ‘spiralling out of control’
Environmental campaigners demand radical new approach to energy generation
By Alan Jones
Published: 29/05/2008

Campaign groups warned last night that the cost of decommissioning nuclear power stations was “spiralling out of control” after an official admission that an estimate of £73billion was set to rise.

The figure, published in January, was an increase of £12billion on the previous estimate made in 2003, but a senior official at the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority said yesterday that he believed the cost would continue to escalate.

Director Jim Morse said: “I think it’s a high probability that in the short term it will undoubtedly go up” ...

Ben Ayliffe, head of Greenpeace’s nuclear campaign, said .... “Waste from these new atomic plants would be at least three times as dangerous as the stuff currently sitting in places like Sellafield and once again the taxpayer would be forced to cough up” ...

http://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/Article.aspx/662660?UserKey=0

But don't worry your little head about anything: you can trust me when I tell you all the employees are highly trained and know exactly what they're doing:

Sellafield worker charged with making bomb

A Sellafield worker has been charged with making a nail bomb.
Darren Morris, 31, is accused of making a nail bomb at a house on Southey Walk, Egremont, between November 19 and December 10 last year.

He is also accused of causing unnecessary suffering to a Staffordshire bull terrier at the same address on or before December 10 ...

Bomb disposal experts were called to his former home in Southey Walk after a suspicious package was discovered on December 10 ...

Morris was employed at the nuclear reprocessing plant as part of an external contract team ...

Last Updated: 30 May 2008 7:47 AM
Source: Press Association
http://www.fleetwoodtoday.co.uk/latest-north-west-news/Sellafield-worker-charged-with-making.4132882.jp