A Greenpeace briefing on the government's internal audit ("Response to the Business and Enterprise Committee Funding the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority") and follow up report ("NDA Budgetting Shortfall 2007-08: Lesson Learned"). These reports expose massive cost overruns, amateurish bureaucratic cock-ups and complete chaos within the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority - the organisation charged with cleaning up the UK's lethal radioactive legacy.
Well, what do you know? Another news story has broken which demonstrates that the UK's nuclear industry is not the robust, well-managed machine our ministers would have us believe. The government has sneaked out a report assessing the working practices of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) which is managing the clean-up of existing power stations and waste. They were clearly hoping no one would notice as there's no doubt that many people have been caught with their pants anklewards.
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Gordon Brown says the UK is at the forefront of a global 'nuclear renaissance'. But despite all the rhetoric, the real picture is grim, writes John Sauven for The Guardian's Comment is free.
Just this week Prime Minister Gordon Brown confidently assured us that the UK was at the forefront of a global "nuclear renaissance" and that within a few years we'd be home to at least eight bright, shining new reactors. We're told a week is a long time in politics, but it must seem an absolute eternity to the ever more bedraggled British nuclear industry.
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A parliamentary watchdog has accused the government of failing to provide sufficient safeguards to ensure that the clean-up costs of a planned new generation of atomic power stations do not end up in the lap of the taxpayer.
Responding to the White Paper on nuclear waste, Nathan Argent, Greenpeace's nuclear campaigner, said: "No company would invest in nuclear if they were left to pay the full costs of nuclear waste. That's why the Government is fixing it so the financial risks fall on the taxpayer. The costs will massively over-run, as they have consistently done so far.
"No-one knows how much the Government's shoddy plans would cost. Even Hilary Benn, the minister responsible, admitted as much in Parliament this afternoon.
"Nuclear waste is a financial and geological nightmare. There is no plausible solution for our existing legacy waste, let alone the waste from new reactors, which will be at least three times more radioactive.
"This White Paper is not about finding a solution for nuclear waste. It's about bribing a community with £1bn of taxpayers' money to bury waste in their back garden. But there's no guarantee a willing community will come forward or that they'll be able to find a geologically suitable site anywhere in this country.
"The Government cannot press on with its plans for new nuclear power when its strategy for dealing with radioactive waste is shambolic."
Greenpeace press office: 020 7865 8255.
We've known for quite some time that the government's preferred solution to that nagging problem of all the nuclear waste currently lying around the place is to dump it in a big hole in the ground. Nice. However, they've had trouble finding anywhere in the country which has been willing to live with this waste bubbling away beneath their feet but now they've come up with the perfect solution: bribery!
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The government's strategy for dealing with nuclear waste was labeled a "shambles" today, ahead of an expected White Paper tomorrow.
Ben Ayliffe, head of Greenpeace's nuclear campaign, said:
"Nuclear waste is a financial and geological nightmare. These proposals do not provide a plausible solution for our existing legacy waste, let alone the waste from new reactors, which will be at least three times more radioactive.
"This White Paper is not about finding a solution for nuclear waste. It's about bribing a community with £1bn of taxpayers' money to bury waste in their back garden. But there's no guarantee a willing community will come forward or that they'll be able to find a geologically suitable site anywhere in this country.
"The government cannot press on with its plans for new nuclear power when its strategy for dealing with radioactive waste is such a shambles."
Greenpeace press office: 020 7865 8255.
Sellafield: major ongoing problems have been hidden from the public
Yesterday, Gordon Brown felt compelled to go on the record to announce that the UK needs to not only maintain but to increase its nuclear power capacity. And yet the nuclear industry is not exactly hale and hearty because, let's face it, it's been a terrible week for the poor dears.
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More gloomy news from Cumbria, where yet another pall of tenebrous darkness has descended over the hapless nuclear monolith that is Sellafield. This particular cloud comes in the form of the hugely expensive and much-vaunted MOX Plant, whose job it is to turn reprocessed material (mainly in the form of plutonium and depleted uranium) into new MOX fuel.
In theory MOX, which stands for mixed oxide, can then be exported overseas and used to power some reactors in countries like France and Japan. In theory, that is. Because in practice it turns out the plant isn't producing much of anything. Apart from headaches for its operators.
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The cost of taking nuclear plants out of service is spiralling out of
control. Is this just poor financial management, or does it have wider
implications? Written by Greenpeace Executive Director John Sauven for comment is free.
This week, the National Audit Office released its damning assessment of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority's (NDA) ability to estimate the true financial cost of decommissioning and cleaning up the UK's fleet of ailing reactors and contaminated facilities. As costs for decommissioning appear to spiral out of control - rising sharply from £56bn to £73bn over just a few years - the burden on the taxpayer grows ever more. And it doesn't end there. The NDA has also been made responsible for disposing of the UK's stockpile of legacy wastes which is estimated at an additional £10-20bn. The industry argues these increased costs have arisen in the face of "significant challenges", but the echoes from this announcement are all too familiar from a sector that has been plagued with industrial and financial incompetence.
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