Hartlepool nuclear power station

Cracked reactor cores have "increased likelihood of increased risk"

NUCLEAR POWER stations in the UK are structurally defective and their continued operation is increasing the risk of a radioactive accident, according to documents written by the government's own nuclear inspectors.

The revelation, which comes just days before the Prime Minister is expected to give the go-ahead to a new generation of nuclear generators, is revealed in correspondence passed to Greenpeace between British Energy (BE), who operate the reactors, and the Nuclear Safety Directorate (NSD).

The documents, analysed by independent nuclear engineer John Large, show that the bricks which make up the reactor cores of the UK's advanced gas-cooled reactors (AGRs) are cracked. These bricks, made of graphite, help control nuclear reaction by influencing the speed of neutrons.

Channels also run through the bricks which enable key safety mechanisms, such as the entry of rods designed to shut-down the reactor in an emergency. However, the cracked graphite bricks could cause safety mechanisms to fail in a severe event and the nuclear fuel to overheat, potentially resulting in a radiological release.

In an assessment report on the safety of Hinkley Point AGR nuclear power station in Somerset, dated in April this year, the NSD conclude that there is "an increased likelihood of increased risk should we agree to continued operation".

The safety issues identified by the NSD are:

- Graphite bricks that make up nuclear reactor cores are extensively cracked;
- BE do not have a full understanding of why the reactor cores are cracked;
- BE do not know the extent of the damage;
- BE do not know how much cracking the core can sustain before it falls below the minimum safety required for a nuclear reactor.


John Large said: "The nuclear safety case for these reactors centres around the core remaining structurally sound during operation. Yet these documents show that there are considerable uncertainties about the core's ability to fulfil its crucial safety role to the extent, in my view, that reactor safety may be at a cliff edge to a very serious accident and release of radioactivity.

"In view of the increased risk presented by the continued operation of these nuclear plants, the reactors should be immediately shut down."

Stephen Tindale, executive director of Greenpeace, said: "These documents don't just show the structural damage to nuclear reactors in the UK, they show the incompetence of the Government and BE who have known about these significant cracks yet have refused to do anything about it.

"It is clear that Tony Blair should shut these dangerous reactors down. Yet it's almost as if he feels that having to turn off AGR nuclear plants to prevent a nuclear accident might be problematic just before he formally announces his staggeringly irresponsible plan to build even more nuclear plants."

Jim Duffy of the Stop Hinkley Campaign, who lives in the shadow of Hinkley Point AGR, said: "I was appalled to read these documents. It is clear that Hinkley is unsafe and should be shut immediately.

"I'm extremely worried that Tony Blair seems hell-bent on leaving my children, and future generations, exposed to the legacy of our highly dangerous nuclear industry."

There are 14 AGRs in the UK, across the following sites: Dungeness in Kent (2), Hartlepool (2), Heysham in Lancashire (4), Hinkley Point in Somerset (2), Hunterston in Ayrshire (2) and Torness in East Lothian (2).

Download the documents:

September 2003
June 2005
November 2005
April 2006
Nuclear expert John Large's review of the leaked documents


For more information, contact the Greenpeace press office on 020 7865 8255.

Sellafield nuclear reprocessing plant in Cumbria

Former New Labour advisor says Blair lied to Commons committee

Reacting to Tony Blair's comments this morning in support of new nuclear power stations, Greenpeace executive director Stephen Tindale said:

"Tony Blair wants his legacy to be new nuclear power stations, but his obsession threatens to scupper this country's renewable energy industry. He wants to tie the country into a centralised energy generation system that relies on huge, inefficient, polluting power stations instead of pushing money towards clean cutting edge technologies."

Mr Tindale, a former New Labour environment adviser, added:

"Mr Blair claims he's only just changed his mind about nuclear power, but I know for a fact he's being dishonest. He's been pro-nuclear for at least ten years. I know because I used to be his party's adviser on green issues. His casual misleading of MPs in symptomatic of his campaign to foist new nuclear stations on Britain. The facts simply don't seem to matter to this Prime Minister.

"Germany is phasing out nuclear power and installing more wind power every year than Britain's total capacity. The UK government has a chance to follow this lead, but it seems sense will only prevail once Blair leaves Downing Street. The energy debate is too important to be decided by a lame duck."

Commenting on the soon to be published energy review, the Prime Minister this morning told the Commons Liaison Committee he had changed his mind since the last White Paper on energy policy in 2003. "Whereas we left the question open and we were very sceptical at that point, certainly, I'll be totally honest with you, I've changed my mind," he said.


Greenpeace press office - 0207 865 8255

more nuclear power stations means grater risk of terrorist attack

A document leaked from Electricite de France (EDF) exposes the vulnerability of one of the designs for the "new generation" of nuclear power stations proposed for the UK to terrorist attack.

The leaking of the document has caused a furore in France, after terrorist police arrested a leading anti nuclear campaigner for possessing a copy of it. In response Greenpeace, leading unions and anti nuclear groups have all posted the document on their websites.

The internal EDF document is an analysis of whether the AREVA designed Generation III European Pressurized Reactor (EPR), would be able to withstand a terrorist strike using a civilian airliner (1).

Leading nuclear expert Dr John Large has analysed the document on behalf of Greenpeace and concluded that there are severe flaws in the reports safety analysis.

EDF, already a major player in the UK energy market, has indicated its interest in building ten EPR reactors across the UK. They are presently building an EPR in Olkiluoto, Finland and a second one is planned for a site at Flammanville, Normandy, France. On 18th April, Energy Minister Malcolm Wickes joined his French counterpart Francois Loos on a secret 2 hour tour of La Hague and Flamanville.

Flaws in the report analysis identified by John Large include:

1. The assumption that the impact of a 250 tonne commercial jet aircraft is comparable to the impact of a 2-5 tonne military aircraft.

2. The assumption that terrorists would have insufficient skills to pilot an aircraft directly into a nuclear power station. This despite the deadly accuracy of the 9/11 attacks.

3. The assumption that up to 100 tonnes of aviation fuel from a commercial aircraft would burn up within two minutes.

4. The failure to include the possibility of fuel vapour forming within the reactor structures and exploding - a scenario which Dr Large judges would severely damage the shield and the reactor within.

The downplaying of the potential impact of any radioactive materials being released following an attack on the reactor and completely ignores the impact an attack could have on spent fuel stores.

"This document shows an almost total lack of preparation to defend against the inevitability of terrorist attack on a reactor on the part of EDF," said Dr Large.

"The fact is if a commercial airliner was deliberately flown into one of these reactors it would cause a total calamity with the release of large amounts or radioactivity."

Greenpeace nuclear campaigner Jean McSorley said, "The secrecy of the nuclear industry has been shown time and again to hide pure incompetence. This time it's being used to hide the fact that it's impossible to make nuclear power and materials safe from terrorist attack".

"That's why its crucial that civil society has the right to review these type of documents."

Dr Large and Stephane Lhomme with a delegation from Greenpeace are visiting the proposed site for the new EDF EPR reactor at Flammanville today.


For further information contact the Greenpeace UK Press Office on 020 7865 8255.

1. Stephane Lhomme, an activist from the French Nuclear Phase-out network (Sortir du Nucleacute;aire), was interrogated over 14 hours on Tuesday after ten anti-terrorist police and others raided his home in Paris, removing documents, computers and phones. He has been accused of violation of France's nuclear Secret Defence for having a copy of the EDF document.(2)

2. The leaked EDF document is a 2003 report from a senior EDF official, Bruno Lescoeur, to the French nuclear safety regulator, IRSN. The Greenpeace commissioned study "Asssessment of the operational risks and hazards of the EPR when subject to aircraft crash" (Demarche de dimensionnement des ouvrages EPR vis-a-vis du risque lie aux chutes d'avions civils), Large & Associates, May 18th 2006, for Greenpeace International.

A video scenario of the vulnerability of a nuclear reactor to terrorist attack is available here.

3. Under a French government Arete from 2003, "Secret Defence", the French state has sought to prevent details on nuclear safety and security from being disclosed. Greenpeace documentation of the vulnerability of plutonium transport's in France have been challenged by the French state in recent years (www.stop-plutonium.org).

Chernobyl power station and the sarcophagus around the exploded reactor. Ukraine, September 1996

In the run up to the 20th anniversary of the Chernobyl catastrophe (26 April), Greenpeace today issues a major study on the consequences of the accident on human health.

The report, drawing on the contributions of more than 50 research scientists, including research never before published in English from Belarus, Russia and Ukraine, seriously challenges official estimates about the number and scale of human casualties resulting from the disaster.

Despite wide variations in available data, results of recent studies included in the report estimate that over a quarter of a million additional cancers will be caused by the accident, or which nearly 100,000 will be fatal. Epidemiological data from the Russian Academy of Sciences suggests that some 60,000 people have died in Russia alone as a result of Chernobyl and that including the other highly affected countries of Ukraine and Belarus would take the total death toll to date to 200,000.

The report condemns earlier claims, most notably that of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in last September's Chernobyl Forum report which predicted 4,000 additional deaths attributable to the accident, as a 'gross simplification of the breadth of human suffering'.

Twenty years after the explosion at Reactor 4 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Plant which discharged radiation more than 250 times that released by the Hiroshima bomb, several million people, by various estimates from 5 to 8 million, still reside in contaminated areas closest to the disaster site in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine.

Although early casualties from the immediate blast were relatively small - 31 plant workers, firemen and rescuers or 'liquidators' as they came to be known were killed in the days following the explosion, hundreds of thousands of people have suffered repeated ill health and many more have died earlier than they might have done had the accident not occurred.

In addition to causing cancer, radiation also impacts on the body's immune and endocrine systems, leads to accelerated ageing, cardiovascular and blood diseases, causes respiratory and digestive problems ,chromosomal aberrations and an increase in foetal abnormalities and birth defects. Studies included in this report acknowledge that as well as the direct impact of radiation, health conditions in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia were also seriously affected by a complex set of socio-economic factors resulting from the loss of land, relocation of 300,000 people, economic crisis, lack of access to information and political factors.

Greenpeace recognises that the wide range of estimates into this 'excess mortality and morbidity' resulting from the Chernobyl accident spans an extremely wide range depending upon precisely what is taken into account. It concludes that rather than being a time to close the book on the disaster, more and better coordinated research into the longer-term health consequences needs to be carried out.

Key findings from the report include:

• Cancer has increased sharply in Belarus, Ukraine and Russia. Between 1990 and 2000, there was a 40% increase in all cancers in Belarus and a 52% increase in the Gomel region. In Ukraine there was a 12% increase and in the Zhytomir region morbidity increased almost 3-fold. In the Russian Bryansk region, cancer increased 2.7 times.
• It is estimated that the Chernobyl accident will cause some 270 000 excess cancers worldwide, of which 90,000 will be fatal. Some 14,000 of these deaths will be from thyroid cancers, 8,000 from leukeamias and 71,000 from solid cancers.
• Thyroid cancer has seen the most dramatic increase of all cancers with far more and far more aggressive cases than originally predicted. It is expected to peak for youngsters in the period 2001-2006 but new cases are expected to appear for the next 30 years.
• Chromosomal aberrations have increased by a factor of 2-6 in the higher contaminated regions of Ukraine, Belarus and Russia

Blake Lee Harwood, campaigns director at Greenpeace UK says

"This Greenpeace report shows that there is a very wide range of fatal casualty estimates for the Chernobyl disaster with credible scientific observers giving figures that number in the hundreds of thousands. It's clear from the wide range of estimates, the many holes in the data set and the variability in potential health effects that no hard and fast conclusions can be reached at the moment. However, it's likely that the true human cost of the Chernobyl disaster will be many times greater than that estimated by the International Atomic Energy Authority.

"It is shocking that the IAEA should have attempted to end the debate over Chernobyl impacts by claiming a final figure of four thousand cancer deaths. The IAEA should be stripped of its responsibilities in relation to civil nuclear power and there should be a coordinated international scientific effort to establish a better assessment of the true impacts of Chernobyl."

The Greenpeace report is issued as a new photography exhibition opens in London to mark the 20th anniversary of Chernobyl. Fallout: The human cost of nuclear catastrophe held at the Oxo Gallery on London's South Bank, features poignant images of individuals and families whose lives have been devastated by Chernobyl and other nuclear disasters.

Lee Harwood continued: "These photographs are a timely reminder that behind the statistics are human lives, families and individuals, who have paid the ultimate price in the name of nuclear power. Anyone unconvinced about the dangers of nuclear power as a solution to our future energy needs should see this show, and then make up their mind."

Notes

The full report and executive summary of 'Chernobyl Catastrophe: Consequences on Human Health' can be downloaded here.

Or contact the Greenpeace press office on 020 7865 8255.

Loading nuclear transports

The UK Government will appear in an international arbitration court from today (Tuesday 10th June) charged with violating the United Nations Law of the Sea over its decision to open Sellafield's controversial plutonium fuel facility or 'MOX Plant'.

The case is being brought by the Government of Ireland and will be heard over the next three weeks at the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, The Netherlands. Ireland is opposed to the operation of the MOX plant on the grounds that it pollutes the Irish Sea and that it increases the risk of nuclear terrorism and serious accident. According to the Irish government, the United Kingdom has also breached its international obligations to co-operate with Ireland and failed to protect the marine environment and to reduce and eliminate radioactive discharges from the Sellafield site (2). Greenpeace believes Ireland's legal argument at the Permanent Court of Arbitration is a strong one.

Greenpeace nuclear campaigner Jean McSorley said,
"This facility handles thousands of bombs worth of nuclear material, which will be shipped across the planet. This only serves to highlight Tony Blair's flawed policies on security and the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons. Ireland is to be congratulated for bringing this case. Let's hope the result leads to an early closure of this plant."

Greenpeace international lawyer Duncan Currie said,
"This is a landmark case in holding large nuclear powers to account under international law. Already the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea has emphasised the obligation to co-operate under international law, and small states at risk of pollution from nuclear activities will be watching this case very closely."

In 2001, Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth UK legally challenged the UK Government's approval of the controversial Sellafield plutonium fuel MOX Plant (SMP) on the grounds that its environmental risk outweighed any economic benefits, and therefore authorisation was not justified under European law. The UK argued that BNFL would secure business with its largest potential clients in Japan, and that the cost of the plant, £70 million, could be written off - at taxpayers expense (3). The High Court in London accepted the UK Government's arguments and ruled against Greenpeace. Since then BNFL has failed to secure any contracts with Japan and has become insolvent (4).

The UK Government will come under further attack later this month at the Ministerial meeting of the OSPAR Convention (5), where Ireland, Norway and others will criticise it for failing to end radioactive marine pollution as required by international agreement.

For further information Greenpeace Press Office 0207 865 8255

Notes to Editors:

Greenpeace briefing 'Irish Government versus UK Government: Sellafield MOX Plant, Permanent Court of Arbitration, The Hague, 10th - 27th June 2003' available from the Greenpeace International website as a PDF document.
(1) The UK Government approved the Sellafield MOX Plant (SMP) in 2001 against an international outcry.
(2) Ireland claims that the UK Government has violated a number of articles of the UNCLOS. Articles 192 and 193 and/or Article 194 and/or Article 207 and/or Articles 211 and 213 of UNCLOS in relation to the authorisation of the MOX plant, including by failing to take the necessary measures to prevent, reduce and control pollution of the marine environment of the Irish Sea; failing to properly or at all to assess the risk of terrorist attack on the MOX plant and international movements of radioactive material associated with the plant; and the United Kingdom has breached its obligations under Articles 123 and 197 of UNCLOS in relation to the authorisation of the MOX plant, and has failed to co-operate with Ireland in the protection of the marine environment of the Irish Sea inter alia by refusing to share information with Ireland and/or refusing to carry out a proper environmental assessment of the impacts on the marine environment of the MOX plant and associated activities and/or proceeding to authorise the operation of the MOX plant whilst proceedings relating to the settlement of a dispute on access to information were still pending.
(3) In particular the UK Government commissioned the report, "Assessment of BNFL's Business Case for the Sellafield MOX Plant," from consultants Arthur D Little. The report was released in July 2001 but vital financial and other data about the prospects for the plant were censored and not released publicly, to the UK High Court or the Government of Ireland. ADL did not consider the possibility that BNFL may fail to win business in Japan, even though future Japanese contracts even then were highly uncertain.
(4) In addition to the failure to secure business with Japan, BNFL has suffered further problems with its clients. BNFL originally stated that they would produce the first MOX from SMP by the end of 2002, to be delivered to Swiss client NOK that operates the Beznau reactor shortly thereafter. Since when BNFL have admitted that they were unable to meet the schedule and that the four nuclear fuel assemblies of MOX would be completed during 2003/4 and transported by May 2004. Greenpeace for the past four years has investigated problems of BNFL MOX fuel technology, charging that the technology is fundamentally flawed and unable to produce reliable high quality MOX fuel. This has major implications for any nuclear reactor that would use the MOX increasing the risk of catastrophic nuclear accident. These problems are understood to be one of the principle reasons BNFL has been unable to meet its production schedule, and why Japanese utilities are unwilling to sign contracts for MOX with SMP.
5) The OSPAR Convention is the Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment of the North East Atlantic.