Greenpeace today welcomed the news that British Energy, which manages most of the UK's nuclear power plants, has called for an end to nuclear reprocessing at British Nuclear Fuels' Sellafield plant
Reprocessing, which involves chopping up used nuclear fuel rods, dissolving them and extracting uranium and plutonium for use in new fuel rods has long been condemned by Greenpeace because of the very high level radioactive waste it produces.
Indeed Sellafield's reprocessing plant is responsible for pumping 8 million litres of radioactive wastes into the Irish sea every day, as well as pumping radioactive materials into the atmosphere from its huge chimneys. Shifting from reprocessing spent nuclear fuel to storage will mean a drastic reduction in radioactive discharges into the environment.
British Energy's decision to push for storage rather than reprocessing of used nuclear fuel rods appears to have been taken on financial grounds. Storage is simply cheaper than reprocessing. Their finance manager Michael Kirwan, was quoted as saying in today's Independent Newspaper "As far as we are concerned reprocessing is an economic nonsense and should stop straight away"
The announcement by British Energy will add weight to international moves led by Denmark to put an end to reprocessing which will come to a head at the international OSPAR meeting in Copenhagen next month.
