sellafield

The cost of dealing with the UK's nuclear waste has risen by almost a billion pounds in just 12 months. It's yet another reason why we shouldn't build any new nuclear reactors.

Backers of the controversial MOX plant at Sellafield, which promised to turn toxic waste into a useable fuel that could be sold worldwide, had claimed the plant would make a profit of more than £200m in its lifetime, producing 120 tonnes of recycled fuel a year.

But an investigation published in today's Independent newspaper reveals what the government has been trying to keep secret - that technical problems and a dearth in orders has meant it has produced just 6.3 tonnes of fuel since opening in 2001.

Since building work began in the 1990s the plant has absorbed over £1 billion in public subsidies - money which could have been far better invested in developing renewable energy projects.

Back in 1999, Greenpeace was protesting about plutonium shipments destined for the Mox plant at Sellafield. Now the plant may have to close © Greenpeace/Sims

In the 'funny if it weren't so scary' category we have the advert which ran last week in the Whitehaven News, the local paper for west Cumbria where Sellafield is to be found. As reported in the Guardian at the weekend, LLW Repository Ltd - the company which has recently taken over managing the site - have found there are significant holes in records detailing what radioactive waste was dumped in the repository at nearby Drigg; so they're appealing for people who worked at Sellafield in the 60s, 70s and 80s to rack their brains and fill in the gaps. 

Some unsettling news appeared in the Independent over the weekend, which revealed that an Environment Agency report has said that containers at Sellafield (where most of the UK's waste is stored) may not be as stable as was thought. The document effectively destroys Britain's already shaky disposal plans just as ministers are preparing an expansion of nuclear power.

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!

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.