A leaked Nuclear Energy Agency report, released today by Greenpeace, contains key evidence which supports Denmark's international initiative to end nuclear reprocessing.
"The industry's own figures prove that Denmark is right to claim that ending reprocessing immediately at Sellafield and La Hague is feasible and would stop the main sources of nuclear pollution," said Greenpeace scientist Dr Helen Wallace, "It is a scandal that this report has been kept hidden for so long."
The report, by the Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) of the OECD was first requested in 1994 by the OSPAR Commission (2), but its release has been continually delayed (3). Figures in the report show that ending nuclear reprocessing would significantly reduce discharges of nuclear waste into the North-East Atlantic region, and cut doses of radiation to the public. Existing spent nuclear fuel could be stored instead, causing virtually no discharges.
The nuclear reprocessing industry, at Sellafield in Britain and La Hague in France, has long argued that reprocessing spent nuclear fuel, after it has been removed from nuclear reactors, is a way of "recycling" it. But reprocessing is by far the largest source of discharges of nuclear waste into the sea, which spread nuclear pollution from Britain and France to the coasts of Nordic countries and as far North as the Arctic.
A critique of the NEA report by Gordon MacKerron, head of the Energy Unit at the University of Sussex, also released by Greenpeace today, concludes that very little recycling actually takes place, because using plutonium from reprocessing to make new fuel is uneconomic. Using the NEA's figures MacKerron shows that the public radiation dose due to the discharges from "recycling" spent nuclear fuel is "unambiguously higher" than for storing it.
"The NEA's own figures show an 80% higher dose from so-called recycling than storage", said MacKerron, "In fact the difference is even higher, because very little recycling actually takes place, or is ever likely to."
"We call on all OSPAR member countries to back Denmark's initiative," said Wallace, "It is now time for the OSPAR Commission to act responsibly and endorse the which would force all existing nuclear waste to be placed monitored stores. Reprocessing is a dirty, dangerous and pointless industry. There is no excuse for needlessly pouring millions of litres of nuclear waste into the sea each day."
