Protest over plan for nuclear dump in Snowdonia
the independent | 13.11.2002 11:25
By Ian Herbert
13 November 2002
There was something of a flourish about the way the Trawsfynydd nuclear power station was unveiled in Snowdonia 43 years ago. Designed by the distinguished architect Sir Basil Spence, it was a regarded as an awesome symbol of an atomic age and its planning permission included no condition on what to do with it when it had ceased producing electricity.
Yesterday, the full environmental legacy of its creation became clear at a public inquiry. It was told how, 10 years after the station became defunct, the Snowdonia National Park must house a nuclear dump the size of two football pitches to accommodate its radioactive remains.
The dump will there for at least 40 years, the minimum time needed to create a national repository to house the parts of a reactor left when a nuclear power station is decommissioned.
The five-week inquiry, forced because Trawsfynydd is in a national park, is the first public examination of the decommissioning of a nuclear plant, and environmentalists are intent on using it to force scrutiny of how long it might take to decommission and dismantle British plants
They are trying to impose a time limit on the dump's existence as a condition of planning approval. This would create a timeframe for the creation of the national repository into which radioactive remnants such as those at Trawsfynydd can be moved.
The campaigning Council for National Parks, which accepts the medium-term need for a dump, wants a 30-year limit for the Snowdonia one, and the Snowdonia National Park – which was not in existence when Trawsfynydd was built – has suggested 25 years.
But at the inquiry, in the Penrhydeudraeth village hall, near the plant in north-west Wales, the nuclear operator BNFL resisted the timeframes. The hearing, it said, was "an inquiry into a planning application, not into decommissioning [in general]". Campaigners accused BNFL of delaying its commitment to remove Trawsfynydd's remains from Snowdonia to save money.
The firm's case was not strengthened by its coincidental admission, in the latest copy of its in-house magazine, that the company's decommissioning and remediation division has already linked with Italy's state-owned nuclear utility, Sogin, to decommission and dismantle nuclear plants, which used the same type of British-built Magnox reactors as Trawsfynydd's.
Another Magnox reactor, at Tokai, Japan, is also being dismantled with BNFL's help. But BNFL's policy for Trawsfynydd is to leave the reactor intact and wait for the radioactivity to decay, so it will be safe to dismantle in up to 100 years.
BNFL told the inquiry that finding an alternative site for a national underground repository to replace the Snowdonia dump would be a long and fractious process.
Ruth Chambers, of the Council for National Parks, said it would fight for a time-limit on the dump's existence. "The prospect of 100 years or more of nuclear storage in a national park is disgraceful. This is a nightmare."
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/environment/story.jsp?story=351587
13 November 2002
There was something of a flourish about the way the Trawsfynydd nuclear power station was unveiled in Snowdonia 43 years ago. Designed by the distinguished architect Sir Basil Spence, it was a regarded as an awesome symbol of an atomic age and its planning permission included no condition on what to do with it when it had ceased producing electricity.
Yesterday, the full environmental legacy of its creation became clear at a public inquiry. It was told how, 10 years after the station became defunct, the Snowdonia National Park must house a nuclear dump the size of two football pitches to accommodate its radioactive remains.
The dump will there for at least 40 years, the minimum time needed to create a national repository to house the parts of a reactor left when a nuclear power station is decommissioned.
The five-week inquiry, forced because Trawsfynydd is in a national park, is the first public examination of the decommissioning of a nuclear plant, and environmentalists are intent on using it to force scrutiny of how long it might take to decommission and dismantle British plants
They are trying to impose a time limit on the dump's existence as a condition of planning approval. This would create a timeframe for the creation of the national repository into which radioactive remnants such as those at Trawsfynydd can be moved.
The campaigning Council for National Parks, which accepts the medium-term need for a dump, wants a 30-year limit for the Snowdonia one, and the Snowdonia National Park – which was not in existence when Trawsfynydd was built – has suggested 25 years.
But at the inquiry, in the Penrhydeudraeth village hall, near the plant in north-west Wales, the nuclear operator BNFL resisted the timeframes. The hearing, it said, was "an inquiry into a planning application, not into decommissioning [in general]". Campaigners accused BNFL of delaying its commitment to remove Trawsfynydd's remains from Snowdonia to save money.
The firm's case was not strengthened by its coincidental admission, in the latest copy of its in-house magazine, that the company's decommissioning and remediation division has already linked with Italy's state-owned nuclear utility, Sogin, to decommission and dismantle nuclear plants, which used the same type of British-built Magnox reactors as Trawsfynydd's.
Another Magnox reactor, at Tokai, Japan, is also being dismantled with BNFL's help. But BNFL's policy for Trawsfynydd is to leave the reactor intact and wait for the radioactivity to decay, so it will be safe to dismantle in up to 100 years.
BNFL told the inquiry that finding an alternative site for a national underground repository to replace the Snowdonia dump would be a long and fractious process.
Ruth Chambers, of the Council for National Parks, said it would fight for a time-limit on the dump's existence. "The prospect of 100 years or more of nuclear storage in a national park is disgraceful. This is a nightmare."
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/environment/story.jsp?story=351587
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