Magnox reactors are the oldest operating commercial reactors in the world. They were originally designed to run for 20 to 25 years: they are now between 30 and 45 years old. They are owned by British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL), who also own the infamous Sellafield nuclear site in Cumbria.
Magnox reactors were designed to produce plutonium for the UK's nuclear weapons programme, rather than to produce electricity efficiently. Their economic performance is so appalling that the Government failed to privatise them in both 1990, when most of the electricity supply industry was privatised, and in 1996, when the UK's newer nuclear power stations were privatised. The main reason for this is the huge quantities of nuclear waste produced by the operation of the stations, and by the reprocessing of their waste nuclear fuel at Sellafield.
The reactors have a history of design and technical problems. As the reactors age, these problems become more acute and are in many cases irreparable. Even the industry's own safety regulator admits that, were these reactors to be built today, they would not be licensed as safe to operate.
Greenpeace campaigns against nuclear power because:
- it produces nuclear waste, which poses a threat to ourselves and future generations
- because the operation of any installation results in routine discharges
- nuclear power creates plutonium, the basic ingredient of nuclear weapons
- nuclear power is an inherently unsafe technology which inevitably poses the threat of a nuclear accident.
