BRITAIN鈥檚 Environment Agency plans to allow emissions of a radioactive gas from the Sellafield nuclear complex in Cumbria to rise threefold.
In recommendations to health and environment ministers, the EA has rejected an option from its own consultants to introduce technology to freeze and store the gas in question, krypton-85, and in doing so make money by extracting valuable xenon gas. The EA鈥檚 decision has been dubbed 鈥渟pineless鈥� by Greenpeace.
As the krypton freezes, the xenon condenses from the air. The market is growing for xenon, which is used in car headlights, double-glazing and lasers.
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Krypton-85 is created in nuclear reactors and released when spent fuel is reprocessed. Last year reprocessing plants at Sellafield discharged 103 million gigabecquerels of krypton-85 into the air. The gas circulates the globe and, according to standard risk estimates, future emissions could cause an extra 80 cases of cancer worldwide over 10 years.
A study commissioned by the Environment Agency from RM Consultants in Warrington, Cheshire, says that it would be 鈥渢echnically possible鈥� to separate out the krypton-85, and then store it for 100 years while its radioactivity decayed. The state-owned company that runs Sellafield, British Nuclear Fuels, estimates that this would cost at least 拢335 million.
But the EA has decided not to force BNFL to build a krypton-85 removal plant. In its latest review of radioactive discharges from Sellafield, it simply asks BNFL to justify its claim that it will take seven years to develop the technology. As reprocessing may end in 2016, introducing the technology now would be 鈥渦neconomic鈥�, the EA says. Greenpeace is urging ministers to overturn the recommendation.
The consultants鈥� study says the separation process could earn BNFL 拢10 million a year. Producing xenon at Sellafield could also benefit BNFL by showing that there is at least one valuable by-product from the plant鈥檚 controversial operations. Similar technology has already been used in the US to prevent krypton-85 being emitted from a processing plant at Argonne National Laboratory in Idaho Falls.
BNFL was first told to develop the technology to prevent krypton-85 emissions 25 years ago, when it was given permission for a new reprocessing plant. It says it has devoted considerable time, effort and expense to investigating options for removing krypton-85. But it has concluded that the technology would involve 鈥渦njustified exposure risks to both workers and potentially members of the public鈥�.