More gloomy news from Cumbria, where yet another pall of tenebrous darkness has descended over the hapless nuclear monolith that is Sellafield. This particular cloud comes in the form of the hugely expensive and much-vaunted MOX Plant, whose job it is to turn reprocessed material (mainly in the form of plutonium and depleted uranium) into new MOX fuel.
In theory MOX, which stands for mixed oxide, can then be exported overseas and used to power some reactors in countries like France and Japan. In theory, that is. Because in practice it turns out the plant isn't producing much of anything. Apart from headaches for its operators.
Like so many nuclear projects, the MOX plant was sold as a guaranteed money-spinner for UK Plc. Instead it looks like we've been sold the sort of dud you'd expect to find in Arthur Daley's dodgy car lot in Willesden.
In an answer given to Parliament, Energy Minister Malcolm Wicks admitted that since opening in 1998 the £470m plant has performed abysmally. Its original operating plans confidently promised it would produce 120 tonnes of MOX fuel every year, but because it was "based largely on unproven technology," it has only made the grand total of 5.2 tonnes of MOX since 2002. That works out at about £90m per tonne. If anyone can think of any more scandalous ways to waste millions of pounds of taxpayers' money, please send them on a postcard to the bosses and Sellafield.
Funnily enough, this isn't the first stick that the nuclear industry's had over its spiralling costs recently. The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA), whose job it is to make sure existing nuclear sites are cleaned up properly and cost-effectively, got a public mauling from MPs on the Commons Public Accounts Committee. When the boss of the NDA said he thought clean up costs would probably rise even higher, MPs labelled its plans as out of control. One MP said "it leads me to think you are not in control of what is going on." Another suggested the NDA was engaged in a "confidence trick," warning that "the lesson from this disaster is the costs are going to be huge, and I doubt you can provide for them."
On top of this the Environment Agency also weighed in, hammering the NDA over decommissioning plans. The Agency said that mothballing decommissioning projects at some reactors was "prolonging and potentially increasing risk to the environment that they pose and the costs necessary for their maintenance."
You'd think that this sort of parliamentary tongue lashing would encourage the likes of Sellafield and the NDA to keep a low profile. Au contraire. Rumours abound that both Sellafield and the NDA are currently giving the glad eye to potential investors in new nuclear power, hawking themselves as ideal partners in constructing a new reactor. The mind boggles...
