I was asked to write a piece on our local nuclear power stations for the Parish Newsletter. Although some councillors liked the piece and thought that local residents should be informed, others deemed it too (party) political, and unsuitable for a parish newsletter that might be seen to carry the endorsement of councillors. The decision was not to include it. The information is taken largely from research done by John French of STAND (Severnside Campaign Against Radiation), who circulated a document to local councils, much of which is reproduced here almost word for word. Other sections are taken from an email response addressed to me by Karen Rushworth, District Emergency Planning Liaison Officer at the Forest of Dean District Council. Additional comments were made by Green Party District Councillor, Chris McFarling. STAND is not a party political organisation, but both the Green Party and STAND are opposed to nuclear power (and weapons), as I am, for some of the reasons outlined in the article.
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| Berkeley Nuclear Power Station |
The history
of the power stations
Residents of Tidenham Parish, particularly
those who live along the River Severn, will be well aware of our two nuclear
power neighbours on the East bank of the river. Berkeley is six miles and Oldbury three miles from Tidenham.
Berkeley, the first Nuclear Power Station in the UK, operated between 1962 and 1989,
and Oldbury, with a lot of time out for repair, from 1967 until 2011. During
this time both power stations routinely emitted radiation into the atmosphere
and river as part of their day-to-day function. There were some ‘incidents’
associated with both stations, and there are clusters of leukaemia that could
be associated with the radiation from the power stations on both sides of the
Severn. In the 1980s it was disclosed that six children under the age of seven
living in and around Lydney had leukaemia. These were shown by epidemiologists
to be beyond the possibility of chance, with the assumption that there must be
some environmental factor. The levels of radiation at Berkeley power station as
measured at the perimeter fence, were consistently the highest of any nuclear
plant in the UK.[i] The intermediate-level waste from the
decommissioning process at Oldbury over the next few years will be stored at
Berkeley.[ii]
The four reactor buildings of Oldbury and Berkeley will remain there for at
least 100 years while they are being dismantled, an unwelcome legacy for our
children’s children and their grandchildren.[iii]
The work of the power stations
Berkeley Nuclear Laboratories were opened in the early
1960s and are still in operation. Much work has been carried out there
including extending the life of fuel rods and the extraction of plutonium from
Magnox materials for export to the US for nuclear warheads. In 2014 an intermediate-level
nuclear waste store was opened at the Berkeley site. This takes Nuclear waste
from five other power stations, including Oldbury. The waste is being
transported there by lorry from Oldbury, and by train from the other nuclear
power stations.
Risks and emergency planning
Nirex,
the Government’s nuclear watchdog, reported in 2005 that due to the risk of
inundation or flood, storm surges and risk of coastal erosion, ‘a managed
retreat from the Oldbury and Berkeley sites over 100 years is possibly
inevitable’.[iv] Since the 2005 report was
published there is increasing evidence that sea levels are rising much faster
than was predicted ten years ago.[v] Safety
planning is the responsibility of Magnox and Gloucestershire and South
Gloucestershire County Councils. Local Authorities are required to have an
‘Offsite Emergency Plan’ to provide a framework for coordinating a multi-agency
response to an offsite nuclear emergency. Following the Fukushima nuclear
disaster in Japan in 2011, nuclear facilities are also required to carry out
‘Stress Tests’. These were completed for Berkeley and Oldbury in 2014[vi].
An EU Stress Test Report on Berkeley power station in October 2011 stated that:
‘It
was recognised (prior to the Fukushima event) that the ILW [Intermediate Level
Waste] stored in underground concrete vaults… would be at significant risk from
site-wide flooding from the adjacent river’. At parish level we have been asked to appoint
flood wardens, but nuclear emergency planning does not seem to have filtered
down to form part of the parish level strategy. In fact there is no evacuation
plan, at Parish, District or County level, for Bristol, Chepstow and the Forest
of Dean, in the event of a serious incident at Oldbury or Berkeley.[vii]
After the Fukushima accident an area up to 30km away from the plant was
evacuated for some years, and an area of 15km radius still remains a wasteland.[viii]
After the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster in the Ukraine, ground contamination in
much of upland Britain, thousands of miles from the site of the accident, meant
that sheep were prevented from entering the human food chain for decades.[ix]
We know that as a result of human error, poor design and natural disasters,
accidents WILL happen - just not precisely where or when. Meanwhile there are
proposals by Hitachi and Horizon to build a new reactor on the Oldbury site of
a relatively new, complex and untested design. The two existing reactors in
Japan of this type have had numerous problems with more than 50% downtime.
Terrorist attack and the theft or sale of fissible nuclear material that could
be used to make a ‘dirty bomb’ is another risk that cannot be dismissed. There
is no way of ultimately preventing weapons grade uranium reaching the ‘wrong
hands’, making our world an even more dangerous and unstable place in which to
live.
Why nuclear?
With problems relating to the
long-term storage and safety of nuclear fuel unresolved one might well ask why
new nuclear power stations are being developed, at considerable public expense?
Uranium mining is, after all, dangerous for miners and those living around the
mines and environmentally catastrophic.[x]
I don’t have an answer to this question, but it may have something to do with
the Government’s desire to please the City and large energy companies happy by
keeping fuel prices high.[xi] It could be
an effort to reduce our reliance on polluting fossil fuels, but support for
shale gas extraction and reduction of the feed-in tariff for renewable energy
suggests otherwise. It is perhaps regarded as militarily necessary for the
production of weapon’s grade uranium?[xii]
It is certainly not necessary in
order to ‘keep the lights on’. The subsidies given to both fossil fuels and
nuclear energy far outweigh the cost of supporting renewable energy,[xiii]
which has the potential to provide all our energy needs. An estimated 140 per
cent of the energy requirements of the Forest of Dean and over 100 per cent of
the energy needs of Gloucestershire as a whole could come from renewable
sources.[xiv]
According to Friends of the Earth, in the first quarter of 2015 nearly 23% of
the total UK energy needs were met from renewable sources, and there remains a
huge untapped potential, with the prospect of substantial job creation.
What can we do?
The spent uranium from Berkeley
and Oldbury power stations will remain active and dangerous for many
generations to come. The threat it poses is something that we need to be aware
of and deal with today. Concerned residents of Tidenham Parish might wish their
Parish Council to consider what they should do to ensure adequate radiation
emergency plans are in place by addressing the following questions:
·
How will we know if there is a radiation
emergency?
·
Who keeps the iodine tablets and who will
distribute them?
·
If we have to stay indoors, how long would it be
for? How will we know?
·
What will happen to the children in schools and
patients in hospital?
·
What will happen to the horses, cows, sheep, to
our pets and other livestock?
·
If we have to evacuate, which roads will we use
so that there is not complete gridlock, and where will we go?
·
Who will collect the people who have no cars?
There
is a ‘Site Stakeholder Group’
(SSG) for Berkeley and Oldbury Sites (this has recently become a combined
group), which gives residents an opportunity to raise any queries and concerns
with Magnox. Councillor Helen Molyneux attends the group to represent Forest of
Dean District Council and Tidenham Parish Council, so any queries can be raised
via her, or at the meetings, which are open to members of the public. The next
meeting is on 28th October 2015,
1.00pm at the Gables Hotel, Bristol Road, Falfield, GL12 8DL.[xv]
[i] Evidence to Hinkley C
enquiry 1987 by SCAR (Severnside Campaign Against Radiation) now STAND (Severnside Together Against Nuclear Development).
[ii] The Gloucestershire Gazette, ‘Berkeley Waste’, 24 April 2014.
[iii] World Nuclear News
(official organ of the nuclear industry), Magnox Decommissioning Manoeuvres, paragraph 8, 18 March 2013.
[iv] NIREX official government
report published 2005, The effect of rising sea
levels on nuclear installations in the UK.
The Guardian, ‘Floods: A disaster waiting
to happen?’ 27 June 2013
[v] National Geographic, 2015. ‘Sea Level Rise. Ocean Levels
Are Getting Higher – Can We Do Anything About It?’ “Core samples, tide gauge readings, and,
most recently, satellite measurements tell us that over the past century, the
Global Mean Sea Level (GMSL) has risen by 4 to 8 inches (10 to 20 centimeters).
However, the annual rate of rise over the past 20 years has been 0.13 inches
(3.2 millimeters) a year, roughly twice the average speed of the preceding 80
years”.
[vi] Magnox Ltd responded to some of my questions to the
FOD District Council via Karen Rushworth, District Emergency Planning Liaison Officer, by directing me to the following reports
available online. One report provides information on the lessons learned
from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident in 2011, and the response by Magnox across its sites. The other reports are a response to
‘Stress Tests’ that every nuclear power operating country in Europe agreed to
carry out following Fukushima. The tests involved a targeted reassessment of
each nuclear site’s safety margins in light of extreme events such as an
earthquake and tsunami. These are the links to the reports for Berkeley and Oldbury.
[vii] BBC TV Inside Out West, ‘Has Bristol an Evacuation Plan?’ 17 December
2012.
Scientific American, ‘It's
Not Just Fukushima: Mass Disaster Evacuations Challenge Planners’, 2 March 2012.
Daily Telegraph, ‘Fukushima meltdown is
warning to the world, says nuclear plant operator’, 19 November
2013.
[viii] Fukushima on the Globe, ‘Evacuation Orders and
Restricted Areas’, 5 September 2015.
The Guardian, ’Fukushima nuclear disaster:
Three years on 120,000 evacuees remain uprooted’, 10 September 2014.
[ix] The Guardian, 12 May 2009, ‘Britain's farmers still restricted by Chernobyl
nuclear fallout’,
Terry Macalister and Helen Carter. Over four million sheep were affected on
nearly ten thousand farms. Movement of animals on upland farms was restricted
from 1986 until the Food Standards Agency revoked the order in November 2012.
[x] Health Effects
of Uranium Mining. Fact Sheet 4, Preconference of the IPPNW World Congress, University
of Basel, 26.8.2010.
Health Dangers
of Uranium Mining and Jurisdictional Questions.
The British Columbia Medical Association, August 1980.
Nuclear Fuel’s Dirty Beginnings: Environmental Damage and Public Health
Risks from Uranium Mining in the American West. Geoffrey H. Fettus and
Matthew G. McKinzie, Natural Resources Defence Council, March 2012.
[xi] ‘Renewable energy sacrificed
on the altar of corporate profit’. Oliver Tickell, The Ecologist, 22nd July 2015.
[xii] The military argument is
suggested by the outdated design of the proposed Hinkley C nuclear reactor in
Somerset, which will use uranium (instead of thorium) which feeds the nuclear weapons industry.
Hinkley A was, after all, adapted to produce weapons-grade plutonium for the US
market. Nils Pratley, The Guardian,
21.9.15. ‘Hinkley
Point fails on cost and reliability, but the show must go on’.See also Paul Dorfman, Energy Institute, UCL, and Stop Hinkley press release, 15.10.14.
[xiii] Juliette Jowitt, The
Guardian, ‘Growth at all costs: climate change, fossil fuel
subsidies and the Treasury’,
24.5.2015.
“The IMF’s latest analysis
estimates that the UK will spend about US$41 billion (£26 billion), equivalent
to 1.37 per cent of its GDP, on subsidies for fossil fuels this year”. Bob
Ward, London School of Economics, British
Politics and Policy
Blog, 18.8.2015.
See also Oliver
Tickell in The
Ecologist, 23.9.15.
[xiv] The Power to Transform the South West. A report commissioned by
Molly Scott Cato MEP. Andrew Clarke, The Resilience Centre, September 2015.
[xv] With thanks to John and
Barbara French of STAND, Chris McFarling, Forest of Dean Green Party District Councillor, and
Karen Rushworth, District Emergency Planning Liaison Officer at the Forest of Dean District Council for much of this
information.
