Today's revelations that BNFL falsified safety records on plutonium fuel threatens to cripple its future plutonium business. The first shipment of plutonium fuel (MOX) from Sellafield is currently only a week away from arrival in Japan but may now have to be sent back to the UK for additional safety checks. The Japanese Science and Environment body (MITI) has ordered that the safety checks must take place before the plutonium fuel is used. BNFL's Japanese customers are reported to be flying to Sellafield for urgent discussions.
Greenpeace nuclear campaigner Helen Wallace said: "BNFL's incompetence and complacency is staggering. This major safety fiasco has rightly lost them all credibility with their potential customers. With no prospect of future business in Japan, the plutonium industry is now on it's knees,"
BNFL's test-case shipment of MOX to Japan contains enough plutonium to make some 30 nuclear weapons in a direct weapons-usable form. The armed shipment has been the centre of protest from governments en route and has been banned from the national waters of many states. The MOX on board was made in the small MOX Demonstration Facility (MDF) at Sellafield.
A full-scale MOX plant is awaiting Government approval for start-up. Approval has been delayed due to ministers' concerns that the decontamination costs of the plant could fall to the taxpayer if it proves uneconomic. BNFL had claimed that Japan would be its major customer, although only 6.7% of the business it claimed it would win has so far been contracted.
"The economic farce of selling dangerous and unwanted plutonium has been exposed, " said Dr Helen Wallace. "Germany and Switzerland are already pulling out of reprocessing at Sellafield and Japan may soon follow. It's time the Government shut this dirty, old polluting industry and ended its role as the nuclear pariah of the world for good."
The Government recently announced its intention to sell 49% of BNFL in a Public-Private Partnership.
"No one in their right mind could see BNFL's plutonium business as a sane investment," said Dr Helen Wallace. "All reprocessing and MOX plant at Sellafield must end today. Cleaning-up and managing the existing nuclear legacy is the only nuclear industry we need."
Further information:
Contact:
Greenpeace press office on: 020 7865 8255
