Scientists say nowhere in West Cumbria is suitable for the deep disposal of nuclear waste because of concerns over water contamination
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Rejected nuclear waste site in Cumbria back on list of potential locations
Tom Levitt
29th October, 2010
Campaigners and scientists express concern over the inclusion of a site near Sellafield in latest list of locations considered for deep underground disposal of nuclear waste
The UK government is considering disposing nuclear waste in a site previously rejected because of concerns over the contamination of water supplies, The Ecologist has learnt.
Plans led by the nuclear waste disposal body Nirex (now known as the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority) to dump nuclear waste at Longlands Farm site near the village of Gosforth in Cumbria were rejected by the then environment secretary John Gummer in 1997. However the government has continued to pursue the idea of deep geological disposal and three local authorities in Cumbria have expressed a willingness to store nuclear waste.
A report published this week by the British Geological Survey (BGS) has now ruled out locations in these areas deemed too risky due to concerns over groundwater contamination and potential minerals such as coal that future generations may wish to exploit.
However, it does not rule out the Longlands Farm site, close to the Sellafield nuclear facility. It was rejected by public enquiry in 1997 as being too risky a site for disposal because of concerns of radioactive waste contaminating water supplies. DECC claims the survey had used 'available geological information' in making its decision.
'It raises questions about the integrity of the whole process if areas that were previously rejected are now back under consideration,' said Greenpeace nuclear campaigner Jean McSorley.
She said the nuclear industry claims knowledge has improved since the mid-1990s and that engineers can now overcome the previous concerns, '''what nature can't provide with the geology, we can engineer round it'', is what nuclear engineers say,' explained McSorley.
In a letter to a local Cumbrian newspaper, Professor David Smythe, of University of Glasgow, who worked for Nirex, said the planning inquiry had 'effectively ruled out the whole of West Cumbria as a suitable location for nuclear waste disposal'.
He said fears of groundwater contamination were obvious and that the BGS survey was 'irrelevant'.
'Just stand with your back to the sea, anywhere on the coastal plain, looking inland at the mountains of the national park. Imagine the rain falling on these mountains, percolating – however slowly and imperceptibly – through fissures and cracks in these slates and lavas, down towards the sea, over centuries and aeons.
'Thanks to the height of the mountains inland, means that some of this water can percolate back upwards to the surface on its progress to the sea. It is this natural flow pattern that rules out the coastal region from ever being a candidate site; it does not conform to internationally agreed standards for such a repository. In the long term, nature cannot be defied by engineering,' he said.
Deep disposal risks
A recent Greenpeace report, published last month, warned more generally that plans to dispose of nuclear waste deep underground had 'serious potential for something to go badly wrong'.
Aside from groundwater contamination, it also highlighted problems including corrosion of containers, heat and gas formation leading to pressurisation and cracking of the storage chamber, unexpected chemical reactions, geological uncertainties, future ice ages, earthquakes and human interference.
'People need to grasp the enormity of the challenge,' report author Dr Helen Wallace had said. ' This waste is extremely radioactive and very hot so it’s going to significantly change the water flow deep underground; the corrosion of materials and the repository will release large quantities of gas which have to escape somehow.’
Energy minister Charles Hendry said geological disposal was 'the long-term sustainable solution for dealing with radioactive waste'.
'Today’s report, commissioned from the British Geological Survey, is a step forward. The geological disposal facility site selection process is based on voluntarism and partnership and these results do not present any reason why West Cumbria cannot continue to consider whether or not to participate in that process,' he said.
The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) claim the local authorities in Cumbria have been 'bought off with promises of extra funding'.
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Users Comments
Re: Exclusive: rejected nuclear waste site back on list of potential locations This article is misleading and disingenuous in three main ways:
Firstly, this information is very far from being exclusive, this story was in yesterday's Guardian, for example, and the information on which it is based is freely available for download from the DECC website and from the MRWS Partnership website.
Secondly, as is very clearly stated in the BGS report, the areas not excluded are in no way deemed suitable for the disposal of radioactive waste. Please go and read the report properly.
Thirdly, David Smythe's letter is replete with numerous factual errors. There are far too many to list here, but he does not appear to understand the current site selection programme for finding a disposal site, nor does he appear to understand much of the current legislation regarding disposal; in fact he lists several things which he claims to be included in such legislation which have never existed in any countries' legislation, nor in any international agreements.
If you are going to write such articles, would you please check your facts first, otherwise it makes you look very foolish | |
Re: Rejected nuclear waste site in Cumbria back on list of potential locations ‘tmcewen’’s comment is assertion heavy and fact-lite. Let me supply some of the latter.
Firstly, the 1995-96 Inquiry Inspector stated:
• “... even on a narrow view of the UK law it would be material to examine comparable sites” ([8] para. 3B.35)
• “I also feel that there is some force in the argument that, if, as apparently intended, the regulatory regime does not review site selection, then the planning system will have to do so to comply with Euratom justification requirements” ( [8] para. 3B.39)
• “... it is plainly wrong under EU & UK law, in my view, to suggest that an authority cannot rely on an alternative site simply because less information is available about it.” ([8] para. 3B.40)
• “... contrary to Nirex’s understanding, it is appropriate for the planning authority to look broadly at the relative radiological protection offered by various sites before the regulators look in detail at the protection offered by the chosen site. Indeed that is, in my view, the logical approach which accords with the Preamble to the Directive.” ([8] para. 3B.42)
• “On reflection, I accept that it is not possible for the environmental authorities & the public concerned to express an informed opinion on the direct and indirect environmental effects and benefits of the RCF unless they are given outline profiles, including locations, of the analysed alternative sites, so that they may make their own judgements of the appropriateness of the developer’s choice. This I now believe to be an overriding requirement notwithstanding the inevitable alarm it would raise in the vicinities of the alternative locations. I am reinforced in this belief by the realisation that this case is concerned with the potential safety of sites over millions of years, in comparison with which the period of public alarm should be fleeting.” ([8] para. 3B.45).
The Inspector’s view are therefore clear; a lot of geological and hydrogeological work has to be taken at a number of potentially promising sites before any one is chosen for more detailed work. In the fourteen years since the Inquiry reported none of this work has been carried out. His findings have the force of law. If they have somehow been superseded by new UK and international legislation, ‘tmcewen’should supply details. The Inspector’s report is available as a Word document form from Cumbria MRWS, but it has many errors from scanning and character recognition. I have an original printed copy.
Secondly, I understand perfectly well the new ‘voluntarist’approach to finding a repository. While it is not a bad thing in principle, it can never override the necessity for geological and hydrological research, which has yet to be done in depth at any locality in the UK except Sellafield. The negative results of the £400M spent investigating the Longlands Farm potential repository are applicable to all the coastal region of West Cumbria outside the National Park.
Thirdly, the BGS remit for Allerdale / Copeland was very narrow, concerning just future potential natural resources. The fact that they have defined two exclusion zones over part of the region is designed to leave the impression that the rest has been given the all-clear, and that it is just a matter now of selecting a site within this area. The BGS remit is now finished, and further work becomes the responsibility of the NDA. I have analysed the report; none of the remaining onshore area is suitable, because it fails to come under any known (or conceivable) category of deep waste repository site. The topography, geology and hydrogeology are all far too complex.
Fourthly, The BGS was asked to include an offshore strip 5 km wide around the coast. Does this mean that the government is now considering offshore disposal, in what are completely unsuitable sediments?
Lastly, I have prepared a simple presentation in slide-format (Powerpoint) form, which I will make available [ www dot davidsmythe dot org ] shortly as a pdf document. This shows, by comparison with international hard-rock potential or actual disposal sites, why West Cumbria cannot be used. No in-depth technical knowledge is required, just common-sense.
David Smythe
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Re: Rejected nuclear waste site in Cumbria back on list of potential locations The presentation promised above is now online - see www.davidsmythe.org/nuclear/nuclear.htm | |
Re: Rejected nuclear waste site in Cumbria back on list of potential locations David Smythe appears to have fallen into the trap of assuming that the hydraulic gradient is the most important attribute to consider when assessing the potential of a geological environment for the geological disposal of radioactive waste. In fact in his presentation (which you can obtain by downloading from his website – see his comment above) it is almost the only attribute of the geological and hydrogeological environment that is referred to. If only it were as easy as that to select a suitable disposal site for radioactive waste - unfortunately, reality intervenes and many, many other factors need to be taken into consideration.
He refers to the two proposed sites for spent fuel disposal in Sweden and Finland, at Forsmark and Olkiluoto, respectively, as representing sites that lie in areas of low relief and somehow representing all that is good in disposal sites. Whist it is indeed true that they do lie in areas of low relief, they were not chosen for this reason. If you would like to know more please refer to a description of Posiva’s site selection programme (McEwen and Äikäs, 2000) where the hydraulic gradient is referred to as one of the many factors taken into consideration in narrowing down the search for sites; however, it is by no means the most significant factor. Olkiluoto, an existing nuclear site and the site of the proposed repository, is on the coast so that large amounts of cooling water is available for the reactors, and it just so happens that that part of Finland has low relief. Olkiluoto was most certainly not chosen because it had a particularly low relief.
Similarly, if you read the many reports available from SKB’s website on their site selection and site characterisation programmes you will see that, although the two sites selected for characterisation (and the one selected as the proposed disposal site, Forsmark) do lie in areas of low relief, they were most certainly not chosen for that reason. Again, they are both existing nuclear sites, on the coast, and as the geology of eastern Sweden is very similar to that of western Finland, where Olkiluoto is located, the relief is similar (they both lie in areas of very old basement rocks which have been peneplained over many hundreds of millions of years).
Other parts of the world which are considering the geological disposal of radioactive waste do not possess large areas of low relief, as are present in Sweden and Finland. If, for example, you examine Japan’s disposal programme you will see that they do not have the supposed luxury of large areas of low relief and the requirements under their Atomic Act do not require only such areas to be considered for disposal purposes. In fact the Atomic Law has only two specific geological exclusion factors – the presence of active faults and the proximity of volcanoes.
It is planned in Japan that Preliminary Investigations (at potential disposal sites) will be carried out in Preliminary Investigation Areas, which have been selected by a rigorous process, in which the various national and site-specific evaluation factors, known as the Evaluation Factors for Qualification (EFQ), and referred to as NEF (Nationwide Evaluation Factors) and SSEF (Site-specific Evaluation Factors), respectively (described in NUMO, 2002, 2004b) have been applied. In addition, Favourable Factors (FFs) will have also been applied in their selection (NUMO, 2002, 2004a 2004b). All these reports can be downloaded from NUMO’s website. Whilst it is true that groundwater fluxes and groundwater flow velocities will be taken into account, as part of the analysis of Favourable Factors, these are not exclusion factors, and are not given weights that are any greater than many other factors. In any case it is not sufficient to consider the hydraulic gradient without taking into account the hydraulic conductivities of the formations, as is discussed below.
Similarly, Switzerland is currently in the middle of a site selection programme for repositories for both ILW (intermediate level waste) and HLW (high level waste), in a country, some of which has very marked relief, and therefore the potential for considerable hydraulic gradients. There is an excellent report on the selection of specific parts of the country considered potentially suitable for hosting both of these types of repository (see Nagra Report NTB-08-03, Vorschlag geologischer Standortgebiete für das SMA- und das HAA-Lager: Darlegung der Anforderungen, des Vorgehens und der Ergebnisse, which you can download). If you read this report (and also the “Sectoral Plan for Deep Geological Repositories - Conceptual Part” by the Swiss Federal Office of Energy, SFOE) you will see that, although there is a requirement for a good hydrogeological barrier (referred as ‘favourable hydrogeological conditions’ and the ‘hydraulic barrier effect’ in the SFOE report) and as ‘Hydrogeologische Verhältnisse und Eigenschaften bezüglich Wasserführung: hydraulische Barrierenwirkung (Kriterium 1.2)’ in the Nagra report, this is, in the main, achieved by selecting, as Nagra does, host rocks with very low hydraulic conductivities, for example the Opalinus Clay. Potentially suitable areas of the Opalinus Clay are selected on a large number of factors, with the hydraulic gradient playing a minor role.
The flow of groundwater at depth is determined by both the head gradient (the hydraulic gradient) and the hydraulic conductivity, with other factors, such as the salinity of the groundwater and the temperature gradient, also playing a role. Rocks such as the Opalinus Clay (which is what is known as an indurated mudstone) commonly have a hydraulic conductivity at depths of greater than about 200 m which lies in the range 10-12 – 10-14 ms-1 (with a likely maximum range of perhaps 10-10 – 10-14 ms-1), with the result that the magnitude of the hydraulic conductivity plays a considerably greater role in determining the flux of groundwater than does the hydraulic head. For example, the hydraulic conductivity could change by up 104 ms-1, whilst still allowing the rock to act as an important barrier to flow, whereas it would be impossible for the hydraulic gradient to vary by this magnitude. This means that it is far more important to consider the hydraulic properties of the rocks that could act as barriers to flow (referred to as the hydrogeological barrier effect in the Swiss regulations) than it is to consider the hydraulic gradient. This argument applies equally to all the types of rock that are likely to be used for hosting a repository.
Andra, in France, is likely to construct a repository in the eastern part of the Paris Basin at a place called Bure (Meuse/Haute Marne). Again, this site was selected not because it has a particularly low relief, but via a process of communities offering to be considered for the development of a URL (Underground Research Laboratory), which eventually could be effectively extended so as to be a repository. Having been offered the opportunity to consider this part of the France, Andra selected as the potential host rock of interest a Callovian-Oxfordian clay of Jurassic age, which was anticipated to have the required hydraulic and other properties and to lie within an area of simple structure. The overriding requirement was to have a host rock with a very low hydraulic conductivity, so that the dominant transport of radionuclides through it would be by diffusion and not by advection, i.e. flowing groundwater, and one that was sufficiently thick and of sufficient extent to house a repository. Little attention was specifically paid to the hydraulic gradient, although the gradients in this part of the France are not high. Extensive information on this proposed disposal site can be found in three reports, which are collectively referred to Dossier 2005 Argile (Andra, 2005a, b, c), and which can be downloaded from Andra’s website. They are available in both French and English.
David Smythe appears to believe that there are ‘international standard models’ of potentially suitable disposal environments and he refers to basement under sedimentary cover (BUSC) and low relief coastal crystalline rocks. I am unclear why he believes such ‘standard models’ exist, as this is not the case, nevertheless, it is somewhat flattering that David Smythe thinks that there are such standard models, as the term BUSC and all the other terminology used by Nirex to refer to these different types of disposal environments (such as low relief coastal crystalline rocks) was developed by Neil Chapmen and myself in 1986, when we wrote a paper for an IAEA conference in Germany on the disposal of radioactive waste (Chapman et al., 1986); see also Chapman and McEwen (1991). One of these concepts was based on a paper produced earlier in the USA by Bredehoeft and Maini (1981) (see discussion below). This was, in effect, the beginning of the site selection programme in the UK for a deep repository in the 1980s.
The IAEA is the only body that produces standards and requirements relating to the disposal of radioactive waste. Their most recent Safety Requirements relating to the geological disposal of such wastes are contained in IAEA report WS-R-4, which can be downloaded from their website. You can see in this report that there are no requirements relating to specific aspects of the geology of a disposal environment, apart from those listed in Chapter 3 paras 3.32 - 3.39, and these are very general in nature and do not refer to any specific geological environments nor to any specific attributes of such environments, except in very general terms.
As David Smythe writes: ‘The overall appeal of BUSC is the simplicity and predictability of the underground water flow’, unfortunately, although this was believed to be the case when the BUSC concept was developed, it has proved not to be true, or at least not to the extent supposed at the time. The original concept was predicated on the assumption that the groundwater flow in the basement rocks (in which a repository would be located and which it was assumed it would be easier to construct a repository, as the rocks were likely to be stronger) would be effectively hydraulically isolated from the flow of groundwater in the overlying sediments, some of which would be likely to have greater hydraulic conductivities than the basement rocks. However, a considerable amount of work in the UK, Switzerland and France in particular, has shown that the situation is not as simple as this and that the supposed advantages of such an disposal environment are not what was once thought to be the case. In particular, the investigations by Andra in France at a potential deep disposal site near Limoges (referred by Andra as the Vienne site), which was of a BUSC type, demonstrated that the supposed advantage of considering such a disposal environment was not borne out by the information obtained by the investigations and by the subsequent safety assessment calculations.
He then compares what he refers to as the prototype BUSC environment, that is presented in Bredehoeft and Maini’s paper in 1981, with the situation in west Cumbria. The paper by Bredehoeft and Maini is not so much a prototype, more based on the fact that at the time there was interest in developing a repository in eastern parts of the USA; so there is nothing particularly special about the fact that the basement gradient is 0.6° and there no requirement in the BUSC concept that the gradient of the basement surface is particularly low. In addition, the slope of the upper surface of the basement does not control the flow of groundwater within it, as is suggested by David Smythe (except under special conditions), it is controlled, by the surface topography of that part of Maryland, by the hydraulic conductivity contrast between the basement rocks and the overlying sediments (which determines the hydraulic connectivity between the basement and the overlying sediments), by the from of the salinity variation, both laterally and with depth, and by the thermal gradient. The conceptual model of groundwater flow shown in the model is just that, in that, as far I as am aware, there are no head measurements available for the deeper parts of the sedimentary sequence, nor for the underlying basement.
He also writes: “In addition, placing a repository in the offshore sediments is completely out of the question”. It is unclear why he believes it is out of the question and whether he is referring only to the situation in Cumbria, or to the situation anywhere in the world. He states that, in the case of Cumbria, it was rejected by BGS, BNFL and Nirex, but this was only because it was considered less suitable than the situation onshore in the area around Sellafield. It was most certainly not considered generally unsuitable as a concept and I should know as I was involved in carrying out much of the analysis. On a more general level, the concept of locating a repository offshore has certainly not been rejected, especially in Japan. Only a few years ago I was involved in providing advice and a training course to NUMO staff on carrying out investigations for the specific case of a repository located offshore, with access from the land.
David Smythe will also not be aware that the possibility of locating a repository offshore in the saline/hypersaline zone has also been considered by the NDA, so that his statement that: ‘There are simply no suitable host rocks, and the surrounding rocks are far too porous and permeable.’ and, hence, that disposal offshore is impossible, is unfortunately for him that is, not true.
Davis Smythe makes the most astonishing statements in his presentation, which demonstrate his lack of understanding of the concept of geological disposal and also hydrogeology in general. Here are a few of them:
‘When toxic waste dissolves, there is no natural barrier to pollution entering drinking water and the sea.’
With reference to the possible use of an area of basement overlain by the limestone belt around the northern flanks of the National Park:
‘The presence of limestone cover rocks was previously ruled by the BGS to exclude a potential site.’ and ‘The geology of both the cover rocks and the volcanic host rock is even more complex than at Sellafield’ and ‘Such an environment would fail completely to conform to international norms.’
The toxic waste which he refers to is the radioactive waste. In all geological disposal concepts in all rocks types the waste will eventually dissolve. The geological barrier, i.e. the rocks along potential flow paths back to the surface, is the ‘natural barrier’ and the slow dissolution and subsequent migration of radionuclides and their potential dilution during this migration is one of the essential elements of the concept of geological disposal, and represents one element of what is referred to as the multi-barrier concept. So it is completely untrue to state, as he does, that there is no natural barrier – it may not be as efficient as he might like, but that is another matter, and the way in which a specific disposal concept is assessed is based around the development of a safety case, which takes into account all the elements of the engineered barriers in the repository (e.g. the waste canister, the buffer, the backfill, etc.) and also all the elements of the natural barrier. So, it is untenable merely to state that the natural barrier is insufficient in some form or another, all the barriers have to considered together.
Many safety cases have been published for a large variety of disposal concepts in different geological environments/host rocks, for example, in Switzerland (for disposal in crystalline basement and clay), in Sweden and Finland (in crystalline rock), in France (in clay and granite), in Germany (in salt and for the situation of an oolitic ironstone host rock, that is to be used for the ILW (Intermediate Level Waste) repository at Konrad), in the UK (for the situation at Sellafield, but also more generally for other geological environments, such as low permeability sediments) and in many more countries. It is very naïve merely to display a overly simplistic, and in any case incorrect hydrogeological conceptual model for the Sellafield area, in his presentation and then to make this unsupported statement. There are several papers on the hydrogeology and hydrogeochemistry of the Sellafield area which explain the situation in more rational and scientific terms, e.g. Bath et al. (2005). The very simplistic hydrogeological conceptual model presented by David Smythe is very misleading, in that it suggests that groundwater flows in a simple manner from the surface through the repository and then back to the surface, almost without hindrance. The situation is far more complex than David Smythe suggests but, more importantly, is also nothing like as bad as is suggested by the figure – the vast majority of the water that falls on the Lake District hills flows either in rivers or through the upper parts of the sandstones that are present above the volcanic basement rocks, as is shown in Bath et al. (2005); the amount of water that recharges the basement rocks is very limited by comparison.
Regarding his statements relating to the area of basement overlain by limestones, the first statement, that ‘the presence of limestone cover rocks was previously ruled by the BGS to exclude a potential site’ is incorrect. I was responsible for supplying all the geological information to Nirex during the site selection programme and I can assure him that that was not the case. It has absolutely no relevance whatsoever to the suitability of the disposal environment; in fact the proposed disposal site in France has a very thick limestone (>250 m), lying above the repository host horizon, which is referred to by Andra as ‘Oxfordian calcareous’ or ‘Oxfordien calcaire’, depending on whether you prefer English or French limestones (see Andra, 2005a, b, c) and also a thick limestone lying beneath the proposed host horizon. The presence of limestones in the sequence is not necessarily significant in determining whether the geological environment is or is not suitable (the Opalinus Clay in Switzerland, which is the preferred host rock for the HLW repository, is also normally overlain by Middle to Upper Jurassic limestones (the Quaderkalk/Massenkalk, the Wohlgeschichtete Kalke and the Anceps Oolite)). It is only where ‘deep karstic conditions’ exist (which are included in ‘Specific complex or dynamic hydrogeological environments’ within the DECC Sub-surface exclusion criteria for geological disposal, and refer to such conditions extending to hundreds of metres depth) that the presence of limestones is significant.
His second statement: ‘The geology of both the cover rocks and the volcanic host rock is even more complex than at Sellafield’ is also strange, as there is no or very limited information on the deep geology on that part of Cumbria and so it is not possible to state that the geology of the volcanic host rocks is more complex. It would be very interesting to have some more deep boreholes, but currently none exist for the majority of the area under consideration.
His third statement: ‘Such an environment would fail completely to conform to international norms’ is also strange, in that, as discussed above, there are no international norms; but more importantly, he appears to believe that because the basement volcanic rocks are overlain by limestones, that may in part be karstic, and also by mudstones which are very variable in their properties, that this automatically rules out the area from consideration. I am unsure why he believes this, as he does not explain his reasons, but I assume he believes that this property of the sediments, if only present in part of the sequence, somehow makes disposal in the underlying volcanic basement impossible. This is not to say that this part of Cumbria is somehow ideal for disposal purposes, but to make these unsubstantiated statements, based on very little factual information, does not place the subject of earth sciences in a good light.
I had thought that the age of enlightenment had forever banished the prospect of wild, unscientific statements, but obviously not. Perhaps if David Smythe were more measured in his tone and considered the fact that he does not appear to know very much about the disposal of radioactive waste, nor about hydrogeological principles in general, it might make for a more rational debate.
References
Andra 2005a. Architecture and management of a geological repository. Dossier 2005 Argile, Report Series. Châtenay-Malabry, France: French National Agency for Radioactive Waste Management. 495 p.
Andra 2005b. Phenomenological evolution of a geological repository. Dossier 2005 Argile, Report Series. Châtenay-Malabry, France: French National Agency for Radioactive Waste Management. 525 p.
Andra 2005c. Safety evaluation of a geological repository. Dossier 2005 Argile, Report Series. Châtenay-Malabry, France: French National Agency for Radioactive Waste Management. 782 p.
Bath, A, Richards, H, Metcalfe, R, McCartney, R, Degnan, P and Littleboy, A 2005 Geochemical indicators of deep groundwater movements at Sellafield, UK. Journal of Geochemical Exploration, Volume 90, Issue 1-2, July 2006, Pages 24-44.
Bredehoeft, J D and Maini, T 1981 Strategy for radioactive waste disposal in crystalline rocks. Science, Vol. 213, No. 4505 (Jul. 17, 1981), pp. 293-296.
Chapman, N A, McEwen, T J and Beale, H 1986. Geological environments for deep disposal of intermediate level radioactive wastes in the UK. Proceedings of International Symposium on the Siting, Design and Construction of Underground Repositories for Radioactive Wastes, IAEA, Hanover, March 1986, Paper IAEA-SM-289/37.
Chapman, N A and McEwen, T J, 1991. Geological and hydrogeological aspects of the deep disposal of nuclear waste in Britain. In: (R A Downing, ed.) Applied Groundwater Hydrogeology, pp. 177-198. Oxford, University Press, England.
McEwen, Tim and Äikäs, Timo. The site selection process for a spent fuel repository in Finland – summary report. Report POSIVA 2000-15.
NUMO 2002. Siting Factors for the selection of Preliminary Investigation Areas. NUMO Report (No Report Number).
NUMO 2004a. Development of Repository Concepts for Volunteer Siting Environments. NUMO Report NUMO-TR-04-03.
NUMO 2004b. Evaluating site suitability for a HLW repository. Scientific background and practical application of NUMO’s siting factors. NUMO Report NUMO-TR-04-04.
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Re: Rejected nuclear waste site in Cumbria back on list of potential locations View on the Ground in Cumbria - Hoodwink and Bribery
At the Allerdale Borough Council Meeting on 3rd Nov Councillor Joe Sandwith called on fellow councillors to “formally withdraw Allerdale’s expression of interest” in "volunteering for geological disposal of high level nuclear waste.
The council heard presentations from two speakers. The first was Dr Helen Wallace, Executive Direcor of Genewatch UK and the second was Professor Brian Clark, who served on the Committee for Radioactive Waste Management (CoRWM).
Dr Helen Wallace described how a deep nuclear waste repository would pose significant risks to future generations. Once the site is sealed it is accepted that water would fill the area and the intense heat combined with water and microbes would corrode any engineered barriers. The hotter the waste, the further apart the containers have to stand which would mean a geological dump (or 2) of 10km+. Last year’s CoRWM report suggested using more than one site dependent on how hot the waste is, the geology and the number of new reactors and reactor lifetimes (new build waste would be hotter as it proposes ‘high burn up’ ie burning uranium for longer).
Dr Wallace referred to an article in the Whitehaven News from 1999 which tells the story of a House of Lords visit to Longlands Farm. The letter writer describes how they overheard the eminent visitors saying that despite the inquiry ruling against the site, the geological dump would go ahead.
The Lord’s report recommended:
* Changing the planning law so scientific evidence could never again be cross examined.
* Paying local compensation.
* Setting up a new committee to devise a process to make putting the waste in West Cumbria ‘publicly acceptable’ cue the MRWS Partnership.
Professor Brian Clark described the work of CoRWM and insisted that this was a long term process to find the best possible solution to "disposing" of nuclear waste. Prof Clark suggested to councillors that Allerdale would be in the running for large compensation even if they pulled out of the ‘volunteer’ process a long way down the line. Prof Clark did not mention however that volatile nuclear wastes continue to wing their way to Cumbria and have done so for the last 15 years ever since the findings of the Nirex inquiry that Cumbria is “not suitable” for geological disposal. Prof Clark went on to say that we should have faith in the regulators. The Professor is a member of the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency, the same Agency that has rubberstamped a new law allowing low level radioactive wastes into landfill. These radioactive wastes – asbestos laced with tritium, are now arriving at Lillyhall landfill from Chapel Cross nuclear plant. They have been reclassified as “exempt.”
I asked if there was any point at which the Environment Agency would refuse to rubber stamp a new law. The reply: the EA “is there to regulate the law – not question it.” UK and EU law is being changed as you read this to accommodate the nuclear industry. Nine Councillors supported Councillor Joe Sandwith's proposal to withdraw and 19 opposed. The option for Cumbria to withdraw from this dodgy MRWS process which has only one outcome may not be on the table forever.
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Re: Rejected nuclear waste site in Cumbria back on list of potential locations Tim McEwan's huffy explanation of the geological "natural barrier" is hardly reassuring!
He says: " The geological barrier, i.e. the rocks along potential flow paths back to the surface, is the ‘natural barrier’ and the slow dissolution and subsequent migration of radionuclides and their potential dilution during this migration is one of the essential elements of the concept of geological disposal"
The most dangerous radioactive pollutants known to man diluted in Lakeland water and rocks before reaching the surface? Gives a whole new meaning to Mrs Tiggywinkle washing Peter Rabbit's laundry in a bubbling Lakeland spring at the side of a mountain. (There are a lot of those in the Lakes!) | |
Re: Rejected nuclear waste site in Cumbria back on list of potential locations I think you should show Tim McEwan some more respect and deal with his points in a more adult and factual way. In my view, the original article that these comments relate to is misleading. The 1997 Public Inquiry did not show that West Cunmbria is unsuitable. |
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