Antinuclear

UK nuclear company salivates at the idea of making money in waste disposal

it is pretty stupid to keep on making radioactive trash, with no way to get rid of it 

Nuclear waste: Clean-up Quandary.FT, By Sylvia Pfeifer, 1 July 13,  More reactors are to be built but a permanent solution for high-level waste remains elusive  …….

More than 50 years after the world’s first commercial nuclear power plants started operating in the UK and the US, the tens of thousands of tonnes of spent nuclear fuel in the world still has to find a permanent home.

The absence of a permanent solution for high-level waste is one of the biggest challenges facing the industry as it tries to recover from the deadly disaster at Japan’s Fukushima plant in 2011. Several governments scaled back their expansion plans, with Germany announcing plans to close all its reactors. The International Energy Agency last year predicted that global nuclear generating capacity would reach 580GW in 2035 – a 10 per cent drop from its forecast a year before.

Yet new reactors, and more waste, are not far off…..

Alvin Weinberg, an American nuclear pioneer, famously said that atomic power represents a Faustian bargain: a valuable source of electricity that carries with it an obligation to deal with the waste.  “New nuclear should not go ahead until we have sorted out the waste problem,” says Doug Parr, chief scientist at Greenpeace, adding that the environmental organisation is “concerned about a new round of spent fuel set to be created”…..

“We have an obligation to get it right . . . We are like a shopfront for the nuclear industry,” admits Tony Price, brought in recently by  Nuclear Management Partners (NMP),as the managing director of Sellafield Limited. “It’s time now to really focus on delivery,” he adds………

In the short term, the pressure is on NMP to deliver at Sellafield. Yet the potential prize is much bigger than just cleaning up one of the world’s most polluted sites. There are potential export contracts for companies involved in the decommissioning work and for west Cumbria it offers much-needed employment opportunities. Success at Sellafield would also mean success on a wider scale.http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/77c177ba-dcba-11e2-b52b-00144feab7de.html#axzz2XvB1ouop

July 2, 2013 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized