British government officials will come under increased pressure today to reveal how radioactive discharges from Sellafield are to be eliminated under the terms of an OSPAR convention agreement signed in July.
Most pressure is likely to come from Nordic countries and the Republic as technical experts, who make-up the OSPAR (Oslo/Paris convention on marine pollution) radioactive discharges working group, gather for a three-day meeting in Dublin Castle. Their chief concern is evidence of accumulating contamination of the North and Irish seas by radioactive technetium-99 (T-99) from the THORP plant in Cumbria, Europe's largest reprocessing facility.
The experts, representing 15 signatory countries to the OSPAR convention on marine pollution in the north Atlantic, are to examine in closed session how to implement the agreement reached in Portugal. This signalled closure of Sellafield's reprocessing activities unless it can reduce discharges to "close to zero by 2020".
Britain and France, the only EU nuclear reprocessing countries, will be the focus of most attention as the agreement anticipated they would outline plans for "substantial discharge reductions" by 2000. According to Greenpeace, these plans have yet to be presented.
Moreover, a proposal to "end all nuclear reprocessing by 2000" will be on the agenda. This is recommended by Greenpeace in a report on future spent nuclear fuel storage options. It has been formally adopted by OSPAR for consideration and includes analysis of "dry storage" possibilities.
Dry storage of spent Magnox and advanced gas-cooled reactor fuels, which account for spent fuels from most modern reactors, is feasible, Greenpeace says. Britain has not favoured this technique but Greenpeace claims it has not been properly evaluated.
It is understood that industry interests will push for reductions by way of "end of pipe measures" - in effect the elimination, one by one, of radioactive isotope discharges into the sea. The Greenpeace report notes that Sellafield discharges 40 different isotopes.
"We don't think they can meet the terms of the agreement this way," the Greenpeace spokeswoman, Ms Helen Wallace, said yesterday. "Reprocessing is an industry of the past. BNFL should now look towards its future and develop the clean-up and dry storage side of its business."
The German decision to end the export of fuel for reprocessing signalled the probability that THORP would close, and allowed the Irish Government to seek an end to reprocessing at Sellafield, said Ms Nuala Ahern, a Green MEP. "This should be the key demand of this OSPAR meeting."
The OSPAR agreement said there must be substantial reduction and elimination of nuclear discharges but the UK Environment Agency set new T-99 limits that were nine times higher than in 1992 when the convention was signed, Ms Ahern noted. "The UK government claims it intends to introduce `filtering technology' for technetium", but Ms Ahern wants the plant closed.
While the meeting's outcome will not be binding, it will signal how reductions may be achieved. A spokeswoman for BNFL, Sellafield's owner, reiterated its view that targets envisaged under the OSPAR agreement were "demanding yet achievable".
