Protests as fuel leaves Australia for Scotland
Protests as fuel leaves Australia for Scotland
There were protests in both Sydney and Edinburgh in April when a ship carrying 114 highly- enriched uranium spent fuel rods left Australia en route for Dounreay where the waste will be reprocessed. The fuel was loaded onto the specially chartered Dutch-owned ship, MV Condock 1, 3,608 tonnes, in Sydney after a Greenpeace protest disrupted the operation. There was also a protest in Edinburgh outside the Australian Consulate organised by Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace and Scotland Against Nuclear Dumping.
This is the first of an expected total of 10 such shipments as the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) wants to send a total of 1,100 spent fuel elements, originally manufactured at Dounreay in the 1960s and 1970s, back to the Scottish plant for reprocessing. The resulting waste will be returned to Australia after a maximum of 25 years storage in Scotland.
Dounreay boss moves to new job
The director of Dounreay, Mr John Baxter, has been appointed a director of the soon-to-be privatised AEA Technology and is leaving the Caithness plant at the end of June. He is to become director of projects and nuclear operations for the new company. Mr Baxter's change of job was announced shortly before the 1st April deadline when commercial consultants took over the day-to-day running of the site.
Councils actions on Dounreay reprocessing plans
Senior legal opinions obtained by the Highland Regional Council have raised questions about Dounreay's planning permission to carry out its present day activities - decommissioning and commercial reprocessing of overseas fuel. The plant was originally a given planning permission as a non-commercial research centre. The legal opinions from two of Scotland top QCs, Mr Andrew Hardie and Mr John Boyd, have been passed to the new Highland Council which took over from the regional authority when local government re-organisation in Scotland came into effect in April.
Nuclear decisions in Moscow
A number of important decisions were taken by the leaders of the G-7 countries and Russia at the Moscow summit meeting in April. While safety was described as paramount by the meeting it failed to explain what is regarded as 'a safe reactor', or indeed an unsafe reactor, and avoided the problem of the RBMK design of reactors in use at Chernobyl, Russia and Lithuania. The communique also called for a new world-wide agreement on liability for accidents to "protect industrial suppliers from unwarranted action..." This is an attempt to overcome the reluctance of companies to undertake nuclear projects in the former Soviet Union for fear of huge liability claims in the event of an accident.
Scottish doctors' cancer concerns
Two doctors in the Western Isles of Scotland have raised concerned about increased levels of cancer in their area and said they believe radioactivity from Chernobyl, the Sellafield reprocessing plant, or some other environmental cause is possibly the cause. However, officials have rejected a link to Chernobyl.
'On-line' re-fuelling safety concerns
The safety of the UK's advanced gas-cooled reactors (AGR) and the prospects of the government's imminent privatisation of the part of the nuclear industry have been thrown into doubt by an incident at the Heysham 2 power station in January, news of which only emerged in April. Concern centres on the practice of re-fuelling the AGR stations 'on-line', while they are still running at high power and producing electricity. 'On-line' re-fuelling, which is crucial to achieving the economic returns required for a successful privatisation, has now been banned after pressure from the safety regulators at Heysham 2 and the Torness AGR in south-east Scotland.
Sellafield "unlikely" cause
The nuclear industry has welcomed a new report from the government advisory-body COMARE, the Committee on Medical Aspects of Radiation in the Environment, which concludes that "environmental radioactivity is unlikely to explain childhood leukaemias" in the village of Seascale near the Sellafield reprocessing plant. COMARE found there is a "continuing cluster" of childhood leukaemias in the village but not in other villages nearby where Sellafield workers also lived. The latest COMARE report also concluded that Sellafield workers exposure to radiation is also unlikely to be the cause.
Sellafield safety fine
The operators of the Sellafield reprocessing plant, British Nuclear Fuels, have been fined £25,000 plus costs of £16,104 for "serious and significant" safety failures which resulted in a worker being contaminated with plutonium. The company pleaded guilty to the breach of safety regulations which involved a series of errors in work permits and procedures, including staff allowing the work to put back on his radioactive clothing after he was found to be contaminated. The worker suffered from acute anxiety after the incident.
Study finds Gulf nerve damage
Support for those suffering from Gulf War Syndrome has come in a study by a Scottish-based neurologist, Dr Goran Jamal, published in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry. Dr Jamal found significant differences in the nervous systems of 14 Gulf War veterans compared with 13 non-veteran healthy individuals in a control group.
High-Level waste shipment to Japan
The Federation of Electric Power Companies in Japan has said the next shipment of high-level radioactive waste from Europe to Japan will not take place until early 1997. However, a second shipment of plutonium from Europe to Japan is expected to take place later this year.
How wise the Goddess of Wisdom ?
Buddhist monks in Japan has protested at the naming of nuclear power stations after Buddhist deities. This comes after the serious leakage of liquid sodium at the Monju fast reactor in western Japan earlier this year which has significantly increased concerns about safety in Japan's nuclear industry and increased debate on the country's concerted drive for greater nuclear power production. Six Buddhist sects have protested at the use of names like Monju, which is named after the goddess of wisdom and normally shown riding a lion. The Fugen reactor is named after a Buddhist icon representing compassion, and is depicted riding an elephant. Nuclear operators PNC said using the two names "shows that humans could control nuclear power the way Monju and Fugen controls the fierce animals, through wisdom and compassion." A chief priest at a temple in Tokyo, Toshikatsu Maeda, commented: "Wisdom and compassion are the foundations of Buddhism and should not be used to represent something else."
