(December 7, 2001) Over the past 15 years, the US federal government and nuclear power industry have targeted dozens of impoverished Native American tribes for high-level nuclear waste dumps, offering large sums of money to "volunteer" communities for hosting the country's deadliest trash. Nuclear waste is not only a radiological hazard and a biological toxin, it is also a social poison that tears communities apart.
(559.5349) NIRS - After a six year long battle between the pro-dump tribal government and anti-dump tribal traditionals on the Mescalero Apache reservation in New Mexico, a "temporary storage site" for commercial spent fuel rods was finally defeated in the mid 1990's. Five years later, however, the wounds still have not healed, and some families still do not speak to each other. Right after its defeat at Mescalero Apache, the nuclear utilities turned to the Skull Valley Band of Goshute Indians in Utah. The Private Fuel Storage Limited Liability Company (PFS) is a consortium of eight nuclear utilities led by Xcel Energy (formerly called Northern States Power) of Minnesota. PFS has been paying Goshute Tribal Chairman Leon Bear the initial installments of an estimated US$50 million for his agreeing to "temporarily store" 40,000 tons of commercial spent fuel on the desert reservation. This Faustian bargain has similarly split this tiny 125 member community right down the middle (see also WISE News Communique 536.5211: "US: PFS gets safety approval from NRC").
Tension in the tribe has mounted since Bear signed the lease with PFS in late 1996. Tribal members such as Sammy Blackbear have accused Leon Bear of violating tribal government procedures, by signing an agreement without first bringing it to the 73 adult members of the community, the Tribal General Council, for a majority vote. Goshute dump opponents, such as Margene Bullcreek, have accused Bear of only sharing PFS income with community members who support the dump, while excluding those like herself and her family, a violation of the tribal tradition of sharing tribal income equally between Band families. In addition, Bullcreek charges, Bear has blocked her family's other sources of tribal income, including federal funds guaranteed to her children from the US government. Bullcreek has tried to lead the tribal opposition to the US$3.1 billion PFS dump proposal, while struggling to pay her own electricity, telephone, and grocery bills and to keep gas in her run down car.
The disputes have even infected Chairman Bear's own administration. In recent months, Bear changed the locks on the tribal office to keep his own Tribal Secretary, Rex Allen, locked out. In August, Salt Lake City police were called to intervene in a fistfight between Bear and Allen. Allen then challenged Bear's leadership, calling for a new tribal election on 22 September. Bear responded by putting bars on the windows and doors of the tribal community center where the election was to take place. The vote went ahead anyway, taking place outdoors in the parking lot under the hot desert sun. Ironically, not only Bear, but also Allen, were voted out of office. A quorum of 38 out of 73 adult members showed up for the vote, electing Miranda Moon the Chairwoman, Sammy Blackbear the Vice-Chairman, and Merlinda Wash the Secretary. Many outside observers initially saw this election as a referendum against PFS, but the newly elected tribal officers soon seemed to take a neutral position on the proposed dump.
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YUCCA MOUNTAIN UPDATE On the same day, DOE terminated its contract with the law firm Winston & Strawn due to a scathing report released by the DOE Office of Inspector General showing that the law firm had simultaneously worked on DOE's supposedly objective and unbiased Yucca Mountain Project, while lobbying on behalf of the pro-Yucca Nuclear Energy Institute (the nuclear power industry's Washington, D.C. lobbying office). On 5 December, the US Senate confirmed Margaret Chu as the new director of DOE's Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, which oversees the Yucca Mountain Project. Apparently, the US Senate was not troubled by the fact that Chu will have to objectively evaluate her own work, for she supervised Yucca suitability studies over the course of two decades while working at DOE's Sandia National Lab in New Mexico. Chu was the 28th person to be asked to assume the vacant Yucca directorship; 27 others had turned down the Bush Administration's offer to manage the controversial Yucca Mountain Project. Source and contact: NIRS (kevin@nirs.org) |
Leon Bear would not step down, however, and refused to recognize the legitimacy of the 22 September vote. With the backing of the US Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) local supervisor, David Allison, Bear called for another vote, this one on 13 October. Allison had given his approval to the PFS plan in early 1997, after having given only a short three days review to the complex PFS-Goshute lease agreement. Sammy Blackbear and 20 other Goshutes filed a lawsuit against the BIA in 1997, charging that Allison had violated his trust responsibility to safeguard the long term well being of the tribal community members and their reservation homeland by rubber stamping the dump proposal so quickly. Four years later, this case is still winding its way through the federal courts.
On 13 October, only around 24 tribal members - less than 50% of the adults of voting age - showed up for the election called by Leon Bear. Exact figures of the outcome were not announced. Bear nonetheless claimed victory. BIA's Allison has met with the two conflicting factions, but no resolution has been reached. There are rumors that the election dispute could be heading to federal court. In one sense, it already has. On Oct. 24, Leon Bear filed a lawsuit in federal court against three Utah banks, charging that the banks had given out US$367,000 of tribal funds to unauthorized persons. Bear's opponents accuse him of pocketing untold amounts of tribal funds. Because there is a leadership dispute, the banks have frozen the tribal accounts. Bear is suing the banks to regain access to the money. Vice-Chairman-elect Sammy Blackbear and his supporters have long accused Leon Bear of using PFS money to bribe tribal members into supporting the dump. Allegations of inappropriate use of tribal funds, used to purchase or lease brand new sport utility vehicles, recreational vehicles, and other cars have also been hurled at Leon Bear by his opponents. His opponents point to Bear's newly renovated house, while other reservation homes are in disrepair, and to Bear's driveway full of a number of new vehicles, while other yards are littered with cars that no longer run. US FBI agents have reportedly handed Bear and Allen grand jury subpoenas, requiring them to appear for questioning about the disposition of tribal funds.
There is another interesting approach to the issue. Tom Goldtooth, executive director of Indigenous Environmental Network and an Environmental Justice movement pioneer, reminded us that Leon Bear is not the enemy - the environmental racism of the nuclear utilities and government agencies pushing the dumps is the real enemy. In fact, PFS leader Xcel Energy is guilty of operating twin reactors and storing high-level radioactive waste in dry casks at the Prairie Island nuclear plant in Minnesota on the tiny Mississippi River island reservation, and against the will, of the Mdewekantan Dakota Indian Tribe. Xcel is guilty of supporting the flooding of Cree lands in northern Manitoba by importing large amounts of destructive hydro dam generated electricity from Canada. Xcel operates garbage burning electricity generating incinerators in Wisconsin that discharge dioxins that have appeared in Inuit womens' breast milk in the Arctic. But there is a ray of hope. In 1997, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission refused to give a license to a uranium enrichment plant targeted to be built in an African American rural community in Louisiana. The reason? NSP (now Xcel) had violated environmental justice principles (see also WISE News Communique 474.4694: "Environmental racism: LES license denied"). As Goldtooth said, it's time for the government and corporations to start cleaning up the messes they've already made, and supporting sustainable economic and energy development in impoverished communities of people of color.
Source and contact: Kevin Kamps at NIRS (kevin@nirs.org)
(December 7, 2001) The UK's response to critics of the Sellafield MOX Plant, aging nuclear reactors and plans for new reactors is becoming apparent. Following revelations that BNFL is technically bankrupt, the government announced that a new Liabilities Management Authority is to take over its liabilities, including Sellafield and the Magnox reactors. Critics who divulge details of nuclear security, nuclear transports or uranium enrichment will risk up to 7 years in jail under a new law. In short, it is full steam ahead for this Titanic of an industry, and the question is, which iceberg will it hit first...
(559.5347) WISE Amsterdam - Faced with revelations that one of its leading players is bankrupt, with installations described as the most dangerous in Western Europe which enable terrorists to hold the world to ransom, any normal industry would be on its knees. However, the UK's nuclear industry is not a normal industry.
Liabilities Management Authority
An internal review of BNFL's waste management strategy indicated that existing intermediate-level waste urgently needs to be removed from its existing, aging storage, and must be treated and re-packaged. However, as soon as BNFL endorsed this new strategy on 28 November, its liabilities rose by 1.9 billion pounds (US$2.65 billion), making the company technically bankrupt since its liabilities now exceed its assets by 1.7 billion pounds (US$2.37 billion).
It was soon clear that state-owned BNFL would not simply be allowed to go bankrupt, as might happen to a private-sector utility. The same day, Patricia Hewitt, Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, announced that a Liabilities Management Authority (LMA) is to take over the liabilities of both BNFL and the UK Atomic Energy Authority.
Because of the principle that assets and their associated liabilities should be kept together, the new authority will take over entire sites such as Sellafield and the Magnox reactors. The management of these sites will then be contracted out. The previous site owners (BNFL or UKAEA) will initially get the contracts to manage the sites and the clean-up operations.
Sellafield MOX Plant
One of the installations to be transferred to the LMA is the Sellafield MOX Plant. This means that the same installation whose start-up the Government considered "justified" on 3 October (see WISE News Communique 555.5319, "UK: Sellafield MOX Plant gets go-ahead") will now be taken away from BNFL as a "liability"! Patricia Hewitt explained that "it is important that Sellafield continues to be managed as a single, unified site". Nevertheless, it seems crazy that the Government considers the start-up to be economically justified as required under Article 6 of Euratom directive 96/29, and yet includes the plant amongst BNFL's liabilities.
Meanwhile, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea has given its ruling in the case that the Irish government brought against the UK (see WISE News Communique 557.5338, "Irish challenges to Sellafield MOX Plant"). The UK government wanted to stop proceedings by claiming that the matter was outside the tribunal's jurisdiction. The judges unanimously rejected this argument, saying that the dispute is valid under UN rules. Hearings will therefore go ahead, and are expected to begin in early 2002.
The Irish government had requested that the tribunal issue "provisional measures" - a form of injunction - to prevent the plant starting up and stop any related transports by ship. The tribunal refused to do this. Instead, they ordered the UK and Ireland to negotiate over the matter and report back to the tribunal by 17 December. In the meantime, they called upon the countries to do nothing "which might aggravate the dispute". BNFL interpreted this as meaning that they can still start the MOX plant on 20 December as planned, though Greenpeace disagrees.
Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace have appealed against the High Court's 15 November ruling in favor of the UK government (see WISE News Communique 558, "In Brief"). The appeal court's judgement is expected on 7 December, just after this News Communique goes to press.
Sellafield also succeeded in uniting all factions in Northern Ireland, where a 4 December motion in the Northern Ireland Assembly calling for the closure of the entire Sellafield site was passed unanimously. Northern Ireland's environment minister, Sam Foster, said the UK government had not consulted him on the decision to press ahead with the MOX plant.
Magnox: dangerous and uneconomic
The Liabilities Management Authority is also to take over the Magnox nuclear power plants. Greenpeace described these reactors as the oldest operating commercial reactors in the world. However, their economic performance is so bad that it is questionable whether they deserve to be called "commercial". This is mainly because of the huge quantities of nuclear waste they produce. This waste is reprocessed in Sellafield's B205 Magnox plant, which is responsible for a large proportion of Sellafield's radioactive discharges into the Irish Sea.
In a 1999 report, the Austrian Ecology Institute ranked the Magnox reactors as the most dangerous reactors in Western Europe. This recently caused controversy since they ranked these reactors more dangerous than Temelin. The report used a very basic ratings system, and Magnox reactors scored badly because of their age and lack of a containment building. (See also Section 4.2, "Whose safety standards?" in WISE News Communique 493/4, "Agenda 2000: Will it increase nuclear safety in Eastern Europe?)
A recent example of the problems of these old reactors was a recent report on Oldbury, which was leaked to the BBC. Oldbury has several problems, including severe radiolytic corrosion of the graphite core (see WISE News Communique 543.5246, " Implications of BNFL abandoning Magrox fuel"). However according to the BBC, the leaked report went one stage further, saying some parts of the core may have already failed. If this is true, cooling channels might be blocked, preventing control rods from shutting the reactor down in an emergency (see WISE News Communique 539.5224, " Wylfa - BNFL deny plan to use 'glowboys'".)
Using "anti-terrorist" measures to suppress protest
The terrorist attacks of 11 September have increased still further the risk of nuclear installations, but they also give a convenient excuse to suppress protest. The UK's Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Bill proposes a jail term of up to 7 years for anyone who discloses information which might "prejudice the security of any nuclear site or any nuclear material". This includes not just nuclear sites and material in the UK, but also "nuclear material anywhere in the world which is being transported to or from a nuclear site or on board a British ship".
Greenpeace UK said they were willing to risk imprisonment to keep the public informed about the dangers of nuclear waste transport, and published timetables of UK nuclear waste trains on their web site. The web site also includes a "nuclear ship spotter's guide" with photos of BNFL ships used for nuclear transports.
Under the proposed legislation, disclosing any information about uranium enrichment, or "any information or thing which is, or is likely to be, used in connection with the enrichment of uranium" may also result in up to 7 years in jail. Pakistan obtained uranium enrichment technology from Urenco Netherlands by means of espionage, and Iraq obtained uranium enrichment equipment from Urenco Germany by theft and smuggling (see WISE News Communique 499/500.4932, "Uranium enrichment: No capacity growth in 20 years"). Clearly the UK government intends to prevent a similar incident at Urenco's UK plant at Capenhurst - a plant that, coincidentally, is also to be taken over by the Liabilities Management Authority.
Which iceberg will the nuclear "Titanic" hit first?
Despite all these problems - huge liabilities, dangerous, uneconomic installations, and new security fears following 11 September - the UK nuclear industry continues full steam ahead. Plans for building new reactors (see WISE News Communique 553.5305, "UK: Energy review to be pre-empted by Scottish reactor plan?") have certainly not been scrapped in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks. The question is, which iceberg will this nuclear "Titanic" hit first: a major accident, a terrorist attack, or a government that is responsible enough to refuse yet another request for a financial bailout. We can only hope that it is the last of these three.
Sources:
Contact: WISE Amsterdam
French police investigate Chernobyl cover-up.
(December 7, 2001) On November 26, French police raided ministries and agencies connected with nuclear affairs in an extensive search operation for documents related to Chernobyl fallout in France. They were looking for documents indicating who knew what about the nature and extent of contamination after the 1986 disaster, and how decisions were taken that led to France being the only Western European country which took no precautions at all. The police operation followed instructions from the investigating judge in the legal action taken by French thyroid cancer patients (see WISE News Communique 556.5327, "France: thyroid patients in court in Paris"). Amongst the documents removed by the police are the entire "Pellerin files" - the documents left by Professor Pierre Pellerin, who was in charge of the French radiation protection office at the time of Chernobyl, and claimed that the fallout did not cross the German border. Nucleonics Week, 29 November 2001
Germany: Kalkar plutonium fuel looking for a home.
(December 7, 2001) On 18 November, a first shipment of fresh plutonium fuel intended for the German Kalkar SNR-300 breeder reactor (which was never opened and is now a theme park) arrived at the port of Bremerhaven. The load consisted of about one-fourth of the 82 MOX elements that have been in storage in Dounreay, UK, for 10 years. After the Kalkar reactor failed to open in the 1980s, the 82 elements were brought to Dounreay in 1991. In a 1990 bilateral note it was laid down that the fuel would be returned to Germany before 31 December 2001. Another 123 assemblies were stored in a bunkered storage facility at Hanau. Together the 205 elements contain 1.95 tons of plutonium. The elements from Dounreay have now also been sent to Hanau, which can store them until 2008 at the latest. Sources in the German nuclear industry said that the federal environment ministry has pressed the electricity utility RWE AG, which inherited the Kalkar fuel, to store all the fuel at its Biblis reactor site. This however would require licensing and public hearings and would certainly face strong public opposition. The idea to reprocess the fuel at La Hague to reuse the plutonium for other reactors came to nothing. A proposal by RWE to store it in the interim storage of Ahaus seems too controversial for the federal Environment Ministry's approval for the time being. In the past, the possibility of re-using the fuel in the US Fast Flux Test Reactor (FFTF) in Hanford was also considered. That reactor has been shut down, but a review is being made on the possibility to restart it. Nucleonics Week, 26 November 2001
Taiwan: election gains for DPP.
(December 7, 2001) The Democratic People's Party has increase its number of seats in the Taiwan legislature from 65 to 87 in elections held on 1 December. Although nuclear power was not the most pressing election issue, anti-nuclear DPP politicians have drafted a nuclear energy phase-out law, which calls for the six currently operating reactors to be shut between 2011 and 2017. The construction of the Lungmen nuclear power plant, which was stopped and then re-started (see WISE News Communique 543.5245, "Taiwan: two sides to the nuclear coin") could also hit problems because the new legislature would be less likely to vote additional funds to cover the increasing costs of the project. Nucleonics Week, 6 December 2001
(December 7, 2001) A report published by the European Parliament's Scientific and Technological Options Assessment unit (STOA) paints a grim picture of reprocessing at Sellafield and La Hague. The report states that accidental releases of radioactive materials could lead to more than one million fatal cancers in the long term, and questions the European Commission's verification of the two reprocessing plants.
(559.5348) WISE Amsterdam - The 160-page report was produced by a team from WISE-Paris (which is entirely independent of WISE Amsterdam) with contributions from consultants in the UK and the US. It gathers together a vast quantity of information related to La Hague and Sellafield, and presents a clear, persuasive case that reprocessing is dangerous and uneconomic. Furthermore, it questions whether the European Commission is in a position to fulfil its obligations under the Euratom Treaty concerning the two plants.
The report has a history of controversy (see box "STOA Report causes stir" in WISE News Communique 557.5332, "IAEA: 'No sanctuary any more, no safety zone' "). Its origins date back to 1995, when Dr. W Nachtwey and a group of 22 senior citizens from Hamburg in Germany petitioned the European Parliament, raising concerns about the radioactive pollution of the North Sea and the Atlantic Ocean due to the operation of Sellafield and La Hague. However, it was not until 2000 that a project to investigate the effects of pollution from Sellafield and La Hague was included in the STOA Work Plan.
"Hassles and attempts to sabotage the project"
WISE-Paris was awarded the contract for this project - a choice of contractor that was clearly not popular with the nuclear lobby and their supporters in the European Parliament. Although WISE-Paris responded to the STOA Panel's concerns - for example, by adding two experts in the field of radiation effects to the project team when it was felt that this area needed more attention - this was clearly not enough for some MEPs. On 21 June 2001, after complaints about the possible lack of objectivity of the study, the STOA Panel decided to ask independent experts to review the report once it was complete.
However, not long after the report's completion, and before the reviews were produced, the terrorist attacks of 11 September took place. Soon afterwards, WISE-Paris produced a 13-page report on the effects of an aircraft crashing into La Hague, which we referred to in WISE News Communique 554.5316, "Consequences of attacks on nuclear installations". Later, WISE-Paris produced a 7-page report on the effects of an aircraft crashing into Sellafield.
Since some of the data used in these reports were also used for the main STOA report, WISE-Paris was accused of breaking the confidentiality clause in their contract. While making this accusation, the STOA Panel failed to mention the terrorist attacks and the urgent need to draw attention to the risks at La Hague and Sellafield - an "oversight" that, interestingly, was not made by those who were reviewing the WISE-Paris report.
Three separate reviews were produced. By and large, the reviewers praised the report and refuted much of the criticism from MEPs and the nuclear lobby. For example, one of the reviewers, Prof. Jean-Claude Zerbib, stated that "the report has no equivalent as far as overall consideration and critical analysis of each of the 'end of cycle' problems posed by nuclear fuel are concerned". Another reviewer, Prof. Peter Mitchell, said "The report deals objectively with the subject of doses to individual members of critical groups..." and Prof. Ian Croudace and Dr. Phillip Warwick, who also reviewed the report, made similar comments. Criticism was mostly limited to disagreements over which results deserve emphasis, a few minor corrections and recommendations for additional work.
However, these generally positive reviews did not stop the critics. "It is clear from these reviews that the WISE-Paris study wasn't objective and didn't rest on scientific information" was the comment of STOA Panel member Gordon Adam MEP. He regretted that the report had been used by anti-nuclear organizations in their campaigns against the nuclear industry, and added, "by raising the issue of aeroplane crashes they [WISE-Paris] are in fact playing into the hands of the terrorist organisations whose clear objective is to disrupt the global economy." Interestingly, on checking his parliamentary register of financial interests, it can be seen that last year he attended a "Foratom Accession Working Party" at Kozloduy nuclear power plant in Bulgaria, with his travel paid by industry lobby group Foratom.
Despite Gordon Adam's comments, the STOA Panel agreed to publish the report as "a first contribution to the scientific debate", pointing out that it is a working document and not an official publication of STOA.
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WASTE TO JAPAN |
The report was finally published on 22 November 2001. Mycle Schneider, director of WISE-Paris and coordinator of the study, said "This is great news after a long story of hassles and attempts to sabotage the project and publication".
Radioactive releases
The report contains an enormous amount of information about the consequences of operations at Sellafield and La Hague. Most of this information is not new - the report's real value is that all this information has been assembled, analyzed and compared to give a clear picture of the extent of radioactive releases and their possible consequences.
According to the report, 80% of the collective dose of the French nuclear industry and 90% of the radionuclide emissions and discharges from the UK nuclear program come from reprocessing. The report is notable for its use of collective dose calculations. These calculations illustrate the entire global impact of radioactive releases over a long period as pollution from the reprocessing plants is dispersed all over the world. The collective dose from ten years' operation of the two plants corresponds to about 1/7 of the collective dose from the Chernobyl accident.
Long-lived radionuclides such as iodine-129, which has a half-life of 16 million years, pose a particular problem. Iodine-129 discharges have risen over the past decade by a factor of about five, and discharges from La Hague and Sellafield in one year alone (1999) were eight times greater than released by the fallout from all nuclear weapons testing. The report includes graphs illustrating how discharges of iodine-129 and some other radionuclides have continued to increase at Sellafield and La Hague since the OSPAR agreements of the early 1990's, in which "Best Available Technology" was to be used to minimize discharges. France and the UK did not sign the agreements (see WISE News Communique 377.3700, "Stalemate over new waste dumping ban").
As well as collective dose calculations, the report also looks at the doses to "critical groups", such as those eating significant quantities of radioactively contaminated products from the region around a reprocessing plant. Here there is a lack of standardization between countries. Using the UK assumption that local consumers of seafood are the critical group for Sellafield results in doses that are within UK limits. However, using German statutory dose assessment assumptions doses 20 times the same limits were calculated in a report for the German Environment Ministry (see WISE News Communique 549.5276, " Sellafield: THORP customers threaten to withdraw business; discharge levels 20 times German standards"). These calculations were based on the use of seaweed as a fertilizer for animal feed crops and consumption of meat from the animals.
Leukemia clusters have been observed near both Sellafield (see WISE News Communique 513.5039, "New children's leukemia study: Gardner study not disproved") and La Hague (see WISE News Communique 448.4450, " Increase in cancers"). Research into these leukemia clusters is inconclusive, but the role of radiation as an initiating or contributing factor has not been ruled out. The report describes uncertainties in dose estimates, risk factors and the variety of possible radiation damage mechanisms, which may explain why the number of cancers expected according to conventional dose calculations is less than the observed number. It is also recommended that the role of chemical discharges as a contributing factor should be investigated, as French groups have suggested (see WISE News Communique 551.5291, "Leukemia around La Hague; link to the reprocessing plant?")
The report points out that past discharge levels were higher than current limits. This statement was criticized as misleading, though its truth was not denied. Clearly the failure to include the customary praise for reducing discharges (i.e. from "very high" to "high") which often appears in reports about Sellafield and La Hague was not to everyone's taste.
More than 1 million cancers possible from a major accident
As well as radioactive discharges during routine operation, the report looked at the consequences of a major accident. Two scenarios were investigated: a high-level waste tank accident at Sellafield and a spent fuel pool accident at La Hague. Both scenarios indicated the potential for releases tens of times larger than the Chernobyl accident, resulting in over a million fatal cancers. As noted above, WISE-Paris produced additional reports following the 11 September terrorist attacks to draw attention to the dangers. Following these reports, anti-aircraft missiles were installed at La Hague, though not at Sellafield. However, missiles do nothing to reduce the possibility of an accident caused by human error, equipment failure, fire or earthquake, which could have similar results, according to the main report.
Verification under Euratom Treaty "highly questionable"
One of the report's more controversial findings concerns the European Commission's role under the Euratom Treaty. Under Article 35 of the Euratom Treaty, each EU member state agrees to set up radiation monitoring facilities and the European Commission "may verify their operation and efficiency". However, since 1990 the Commission has only performed one verification visit to Sellafield (6-10 December 1993) and one to La Hague (22-26 July 1996). The report of the Sellafield visit contained no analysis, discussion of criticism. These activities are, according to the STOA report, "obviously not appropriate" to make effective use of the Commission's control rights under the Euratom treaty, and verify the operation and efficiency of radiation monitoring.
More controversial still, however, is Article 37, under which the European Commission assesses plans for disposal of radioactive waste in order to determine whether they are "liable to result in the radioactive contamination of the water, soil or airspace of another Member State". In order to give an Opinion on plans covering both routine discharges and possible accidents at reprocessing facilities, the European Commission apparently devoted just 2 man-months of work. This work included co-ordinating a Group of Experts of over 40 people. The STOA report concluded that it is therefore highly questionable whether the Commission is in a position to fulfil its obligations. However, one of the reviewers of the report, Prof. Mitchell, happened to be a member of the above-mentioned Group of Experts, and felt that the Commission has fulfilled its obligations under Article 37 "efficiently and expeditiously".
Not "if", but "when"
Commentators mostly agree that the days of reprocessing in Europe are numbered - the question is not "if", but "when" reprocessing at Sellafield and La Hague will cease. The STOA report's contribution to this is described by Prof. Croudace and Dr. Warwick in their review: "The STOA document provides a number of good reasons for curtailing nuclear reprocessing in favour of fuel storage on safety and financial grounds. The rate at which all of these seemingly inevitable changes will occur is the key question."
Many organizations will find that the report is of unprecedented value in the campaign to stop reprocessing. Indeed, it has already been used by the Irish government in its case against the UK over the Sellafield MOX Plant (see "Full steam ahead for UK nuclear industry's 'Titanic'" in this WISE News Communique). No doubt it will be cited in many more cases to come.
Sources:
Contact: WISE-Paris, 31-33, rue de la Colonie, 75013 Paris, France Tel: +33 1 45 64 47 93. Fax: +33 1 45 80 48 58. Email: secretariat@wise-paris.org
Web: www.wise-paris.org
(December 7, 2001) Austrian Chancellor Schuessel's coalition partner, the far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ), has rejected an agreement the Austrian government reached on 29 November with the Czech Republic on the controversial Temelin nuclear power plant.
(559.5350) WISE Amsterdam - The issue is getting more and more tense because of the negotiations between the Czech Republic and the current EU member states about the acceptance of the Czech Republic as a new member of the EU in a few years. Austria has, up till last week, always said it would block its neighbors' membership as long as the Czechs insist on running Temelin. But this position has isolated Austria within the EU as none of the other member states wants to take such a strong position.
Schuessel is under high pressure from his own Conservative Party (ÖVP) to solve the issue without endangering his cabinet. He is also under pressure from the environmental movement, which wants Temelin shut but rejects the nationalism of the rightwing FPÖ. In an attempt to solve the issue, he asked European Commissioner Verheugen (responsible for the enlargement process) to facilitate direct talks with his Czech counterpart Zeman.
The 29 November agreement concluded the so-called Melk process in which the two countries have tried to resolve differences over Temelin (see WISE News Communique 557.5336: "Temelin-1 to 75% then closed again after incident"). Schuessel stated that he accepted Czech assurances about the safety of Temelin in a deal that EU commissioner Verheugen said would "end a blockade of the accession process". (For more background on EU enlargement and nuclear safety, see WISE News Communique Special 493/494: "Agenda 2000 - will it increase nuclear safety?")
The Schuessel-Zeman agreement is embodied in a document that lists seven safety issues to be resolved before Austria accepts the full start-up of the reactor. (The ÖVP has put it on its website www.oevp.at/download/otoene/bruessel.pdf). The Czech government has promised to backfit the Temelin reactor if the new investigations necessitate extra safety upgrades.
The seven safety issues to be investigated are:
The first two issues (pipe break and valves) are not new; their investigation was already agreed upon in June by a special EU Working Party on Nuclear Safety. The first investigation is to be completed by September 2002, the second by June 2002.
Dana Drabova, chair of the Czech State Office for Nuclear Safety (SUJB), said that if the international review showed that the original safety case for the piping, which relies on pipe whip restraints, did not comply with requirements "widely applied in the EU," SUJB would reconsider their original licensing decision. Czech officials said the new investigation will look at whether it is necessary and feasible to build additional walls to isolate the high-energy piping, as is required by German nuclear safety standards. This would cost about US$2.7 million.
According to Verheugen, Temelin will, with the new safety upgrades, "have the same safety levels as required for all European reactors". This is a quite meaningless statement as there is currently no common European safety standard. The Belgium prime minister (till the end of the year the chair of the EU) has promised Austria to table the safety standard issue for the coming EU summit on 14 and 15 December in Brussels.
Immediately after Schuessel's press statements on 29 November, the FPÖ announced that "the agreement is not complete". The party, with the same number of parliamentary seats and cabinet posts as the ÖVP, did not explicitly threaten a veto but added "[we] cannot imagine that operating Temelin is more important to the Czechs than joining the EU".
The Austrian government almost collapsed on the issue. The FPÖ insisted on holding a binding referendum in Austria on the issue. If a majority of the citizens would agree to block Czech membership of the EU because of Temelin, there will be no alternative for the Austrian government than to vote in the EU against Czech entry. That would lead to a complete isolation of Austria within the EU.
A week before the agreement, on 22 November, the European Commission irrevocably rejected the European Parliament's demand to hold an international conference on the safety of Temelin. One of the possibilities to find a solution for the dispute with the Austrian environmental movement, the FPÖ and the European Parliament is the intention, expressed by officials within the EU, to prepare basic European standards for nuclear safety by 2004. This could then be concluded at the Intergovernmental Conference (IGC) in 2004 for which preparations will start at the coming EU summit in Brussels.
Sources:
Contact:Global 2000, Flurschützstraße 13, 1120 Vienna, Austria
Tel: +43 1 812 57 30-0; fax +43 1 812 57 28
Email: office@global2000.at
Web: www.global2000.at
(December 7, 2001) At a sitting in which only 15 of the 435 Members were present, the US House of Representatives voted on 27 November 2001 to reauthorize the Price-Anderson Act, which limits liability for nuclear operators in the event of a serious accident or terrorist attack and shifts much of the burden to taxpayers.
(559.5346) Public Citizen - Lawmakers passed the bill, H.R. 2983, by a voice vote despite opposition from a broad coalition of public interest and environmental groups. The legislation must now be considered by the Senate.
The Price-Anderson Act establishes a taxpayer-backed insurance regime for US nuclear power plants. It reduces the amount of insurance that nuclear operators are required to carry and caps their liability for damages. The sizable discrepancy between the Price-Anderson liability cap and the calculated economic consequences of a nuclear incident leaves the public unprotected and the industry unaccountable in the event of a serious accident.
Security concerns raised other issues related to Price-Anderson reauthorization and the limited liability of nuclear operators. Following the recent terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon More than 100 groups representing concerned citizens across the country sent a letter to political leaders urging Congress to reject reauthorization of the Price-Anderson Act since US nuclear reactors were not designed to withstand the sort of attack witnessed on 11 September. Although H.R. 2983 directs the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission to conduct a study of nuclear power plant vulnerabilities, the bill stops short of reassessing insurance requirements in light of the new terrorist threat or making Price-Anderson coverage contingent on compliance with increased security requirements. To the contrary, H.R. 2983 offers special concessions to proposed new Pebble Bed Modular Reactors, which lack a containment structure and would be particularly vulnerable targets.
Furthermore, by artificially limiting the liability of nuclear operators, the Price-Anderson Act serves as an indirect subsidy to the nuclear industry in terms of foregone insurance premiums. The amount of this subsidy has been estimated to range from US$3.45 million to US$33 million per reactor, per year, for an industry-wide total of between US$366 million and US$3.4 billion each year. By masking the risk of nuclear power, the Price-Anderson Act distorts economic viability assessments and grants nuclear power a competitive advantage over other energy sources.
Republican House leaders sneaked the reauthorization bill onto the suspension calendar just before Thanksgiving (22 November), after many elected representatives and their staff had left for the holiday. The suspension calendar usually is reserved for non-controversial matters such as naming new post offices; debate is limited and amendments are prohibited. Unless a member specifically requests a roll call vote, items on the suspension calendar are not subject to a recorded vote and there is no quorum requirement. Many lawmakers expected a roll call vote on H.R. 2983 to be held later in the day, but legislation opponents failed to call for such a vote, so only 15 of the 435 House members were present when Price-Anderson reauthorization was considered.
Energy activists criticized House leadership for forcing such significant legislation through a restricted legislative process. Price-Anderson reauthorization is favored by the pro-nuclear Bush administration.
"Democrats and Republicans alike capitulated to nuclear industry lobbyists in allowing this flawed legislation to pass," said a statement issued on November 28 by Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy organization based in Washington. "Apparently this House is more concerned with securing campaign contributions from the nuclear industry than protecting public health and safety."
Representative Joe Barton, Republican chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee and strong supporter of H.R. 2983, received US$131,590 from electric utilities in the last election cycle, making them his top campaign contributor. Electric utilities are also the top contributor to the committee's lead Democrat, Representative John Dingell from Michigan, who received US$109,679 leading up to the 2000 election.
The Price-Anderson Act, although originally intended to be temporary, has been reauthorized periodically since its original enactment in 1957. The last reauthorization bill was passed in 1988 and would expire on 1 August 2002, without Congressional action. Even if the Act were not reauthorized, a "grandfathering" clause stipulates that reactors licensed prior to 1 August 2002, would continue to benefit from Price-Anderson indemnification throughout their operating lifetimes. H.R. 2983, which reauthorizes the Price-Anderson Act for another 15 years, extends this coverage to reactors licensed between now and 2017, paving the way for a new generation of nuclear reactors.
H.R. 2983 does not become law unless passed by the US Senate. The Senate is expected to consider Price-Anderson reauthorization as part of a comprehensive energy bill early next year.
Source and contact: Lisa Gue, Public Citizen's Critical Mass Energy & Environment Program, 215 Pennsylvania Ave. SE, Washington, DC 20003, US
Tel: (202) 454-5130. Fax: (202) 547-7392
E-mail: LISA_GUE@citizen.org
Web: www.citizen.org/cmep
(December 7, 2001) On 29 November, at the meeting of the Board of Directors of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) no decision was taken on the requested loan for the completion of the Ukrainian Khmelnitsky-2 and Rivne-4 reactors. This came after a surprising move by the Ukrainian representatives who requested that the Board not consider the loan for the completion of the two reactors.
(559.5345) CEE Bankwatch Network/WISE Amsterdam - In the meeting, the Ukrainian authorities asked for further consultation on some conditions of the loan and indicated that the project was not yet ready for an immediate decision. Due to this move the Board did not even discuss or consider the question whether the project fully met the conditions (see also WISE News Communique 558.5344: "Final (?) decision on K2/R4 next week").
CEE Bankwatch Network, the international NGO who has been campaigning for years on this issue said to be "happy to see this move, as taxpayers' money should not be used to support unsafe and uneconomic nuclear power plants". Bankwatch believes that the Ukrainian withdrawal of the project creates a need to intensify the EBRD's and other financial institutions' investment into the Ukrainian Energy sector. "We urge the EBRD and the World Bank to fulfil their joint Energy Efficiency Plan for Ukraine prepared in 1998 that has thus far been ignored by those institutions," added Petr Hlobil, spokesman for Bankwatch. The completion of the reactors got preliminary approval in December of last year for a loan of US$215 million, in reaction to the blackmailing of the international community by the Ukrainian President Kuchma, who threatened them with the continued operation of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.
Being aware of the problems associated with the project, the EBRD Board had difficulty approving the loan. Eighteen countries represented on the Board voted against the project or abstained (see WISE News Communique 540.5226: "EBRD approves K2R4 loan - campaign continues").
Finally, the project was approved with a number of conditions attached. This 2000 decision was followed by the approval of a Euratom loan of US$585 million, and cleared the way for the rest of the donors to collect the US$1.48 billion needed for K2/R4. Funds for the completion of the K2/R4 units were supposed to come from the following sources: Energoatom (project sponsor), the EBRD, Euratom, the Russian government, the Export Credit Agencies of the UK, Czech Republic, France, Spain and Switzerland and the US ExIm Bank.
The EBRD Board minutes report that one of the conditions to the effectiveness of K2/R4 loan approval is "Commitment by other co-financiers to provide funds for the project". It is only the Czech ECA that has committed itself to provide funding. Other ECAs promised no more than to "consider the project favorably".
Parallel to the withdrawal, Ukraine president Kuchma is negotiating with Russia's president Vladimir Putin on Russian participation in the completion of the two nuclear reactors. "Ukrainian NGOs welcome the fact that the EBRD is not going to finance those reactors, but we know that it is not the end of this bitter tale," said Yury Urbansky, from the National Ecological Center of Ukraine. "President Kuchma is trying to increase Ukrainian dependence on Russia."
On the day of the EBRD board meeting, Kuchma said that his country would rely on Russia's help to complete construction of the reactors, turning its back on Western offers of assistance.
Kuchma said the conditions imposed by the EBRD were "unacceptable. It amounts to eternal slavery for Ukraine". A few days later, on 3 December, Kuchma commented on his own earlier statements by saying the Ukrain was "ready to get around the negotiating table with the EBRD in order to resolve all problems". This seems an impossible option as the EBRD's rules mean that if the deal was not agreed upon at the 29 November meeting the whole review process would have to start all-over from scratch.
Source and contact:
CEE Bankwatch Network, PO Box 89, 01025 Kiev, Ukraine
Tel: +380 44 238 6260; fax: +380 44 238 6259
Email: opasyuk@bankwatch.org
Web: www.bankwatch.org/k2r4