The troubled plutonium and uranium reprocessing plant at Sellafield may have to shut down.

The Sellafield mixed oxide plant (SMP) cost the taxpayer £472 million and was intended to turn plutonium and uranium recovered from used nuclear fuel into usable fuel for overseas nuclear reactors.

It was completed in 1996, but the commercial go-ahead for the plant was withheld following financial concerns and a scandal in 1999 involving falsified safety data. The justification for the operation of the plant was not achieved until October 2001 and it is now under the control of the state financed Nuclear Decommissioning Authority.

In 2001, Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth took the government to the High Court claiming that the decision to allow British Nuclear Fuels Ltd (BNFL) to begin operation of the plant at Sellafield was unlawful because:

• it would incur an overall financial loss;
• and, the predicted £200m income relied on customers that did not exist. BNFL only had contracts for less than 10 per cent of the business it hoped to attract.

The Irish and Norwegian governments also made separate legal challenges to the plant.

Since 2001, the plant has suffered a number of repeated breakdowns. Last spring the then energy minister, Malcolm Wicks, admitted in response to a parliamentary question that the SMP had managed to reprocess only 2.6 tonnes of fuel per year between 2002 and 2007. The plant was supposed to reprocess 120 tonnes a year to make it financially viable.

Between 1998 and 2002, the plant produced annual figures respectively of 2.3 tonnes, 0.3 tonnes, 0 tonnes and 0 tonnes following a string of technical difficulties. Wicks said it was using "largely unproven technology" and admitted that even when it operated at top capacity it could produce only 72 tonnes a year by 2001.

The current so-called third generation nuclear reactors, the European Pressurised Water Reactors, currently under construction in Olkiluoto in Finland and Flamanville in France have both been plagued with construction delays. The reactor at Olkiluoto is three years behind schedule and over 2 billion euros over budget.

Nathan Argent, head of Greenpeace's energy solutions unit, said: "It's no wonder the nuclear industry has become notorious for making suspect financial claims and duping pliant ministers.

"For years we urged the government to treat the industry's predictions with the scepticism they deserved, but our pleas fell on deaf ears. Now we're seeing the whole sorry saga repeated with nuclear new-build.

"Once again the same tired lines about sparkling new equipment are wrapped in make-believe financial forecasts, and ministers are swallowing it all hook, line and sinker."

ENDS

Greenpeace press office: 020 7865 8255

Responding to the White Paper on nuclear waste, Nathan Argent, Greenpeace's nuclear campaigner, said: "No company would invest in nuclear if they were left to pay the full costs of nuclear waste. That's why the Government is fixing it so the financial risks fall on the taxpayer. The costs will massively over-run, as they have consistently done so far.

"No-one knows how much the Government's shoddy plans would cost. Even Hilary Benn, the minister responsible, admitted as much in Parliament this afternoon.

"Nuclear waste is a financial and geological nightmare. There is no plausible solution for our existing legacy waste, let alone the waste from new reactors, which will be at least three times more radioactive.

"This White Paper is not about finding a solution for nuclear waste. It's about bribing a community with £1bn of taxpayers' money to bury waste in their back garden. But there's no guarantee a willing community will come forward or that they'll be able to find a geologically suitable site anywhere in this country.

"The Government cannot press on with its plans for new nuclear power when its strategy for dealing with radioactive waste is shambolic."

• The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, the body in charge of dealing with the UK's radioactive waste, admitted recently that the costs of cleaning up existing nuclear waste, estimated to already be £73bn, were likely to spiral by billions. When pressed on how much it might increase an NDA spokesman claimed "I'm sure it'll be some billions, I really don't know." http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7421879.stm

• Yesterday, the government's former advisor on nuclear waste disposal, said that energy companies are being a hidden subsidy to build new nuclear power stations through the proposed funding of waste disposal. (‘Subsidy' for nuclear power attacked, Financial Times, 11 June) 

Greenpeace press office: 020 7865 8255.