A new plant to make plutonium fuel for nuclear power stations, given the go-ahead by the British government on Wednesday, is already facing legal action from environmentalists.
The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs announced that a scheme to make mixed plutonium and uranium oxide fuel (MOX) from reactor spent fuel was economically justified. The state-owned company, British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL), completed building a MOX fabrication plant at Sellafield in Cumbria in 1996.
But it has been repeatedly delayed because of a scandal over the falsification of data on prototype MOX fuel exported to Japan. Five public consultations have been carried out over five years, prompting some 9000 responses.
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Now Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth are both threatening to take the government to court for allegedly failing to prove under European law that the plant鈥檚 economic benefits will outweigh its environmental damage. 鈥淪ome may think that this is the end of the MOX controversy,鈥� warns Stephen Tindale, Greenpeace鈥檚 executive director. 鈥淚n reality, it is just the beginning.鈥�
BNFL, however, is 鈥渄elighted鈥� with the government鈥檚 decision. The MOX plant already has enough commitments from customers in Japan, Germany, Sweden and Switzerland to ensure that it will break even, it says. 鈥淥ur customers have been extremely patient,鈥� adds the company鈥檚 chief executive, Norman Askew.
Bomb making
快猫短视频 revealed on 11 September that the 拢470 million plant was about to be given the green light, though the announcement was delayed in the wake of the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. 快猫短视频s have previously pointed out that it would be easy for terrorist groups to make MOX fuel into an atomic bomb.
Frank Barnaby, a nuclear physicist who worked at the nuclear weapons laboratory at Aldermaston in Berkshire in the 1950s, has argued that a primitive bomb could be made with 35 kilograms of plutonium dioxide.
If the metal was separated out, only 13 kilograms would be needed to make an explosion with a yield of 100 tonnes of TNT 鈥� 50 times bigger than the bomb which exploded in Oklahoma City six years ago.
鈥淚t beggars belief that the government can give the go-ahead to a process which involves the transportation of plutonium that could be used to make weapons. It will make the world a less safe place,鈥� claims Charles Secrett, director of Friends of the Earth.
But BNFL believes that the risk of MOX fuel being stolen is 鈥渕inimal鈥�. The security arrangements 鈥渁re mature, comprehensive and robust,鈥� insisted a company spokeswoman: 鈥淲e are 100% confident in the physical protection measures we have.鈥�