Examination of Witnesses (Questions 780-799)
MR RICHARD
WAITE AND
DR BRIAN
BURNETT
17 MAY 2006
Q780 Albert Owen: Do you see any
potential conflict between the owners of the site and them not
getting involved in certain aspects of it?
Dr Burnett: There is a potential
for conflict but the contract is set in such a way and the protocols
are agreed with the regulators in such a way to ensure that does
not happen. It is something that we constantly remind ourselves
of because we are not the licence holder. They are a full scope
contractor which means that they provide the programme of works,
we provide the money and there is an incentive arrangement in
the contract whereby they earn a fee against performance against
a contract of work that they have put forward and we co-ordinate
in a national sense. It is a very important area that we do not
direct work that we are not licensed for.
Q781 Albert Owen: At present, what
is the timetable for decommissioning Wylfa? You have just brought
out this strategic plan, of which we have had the draft and the
final. What is the timetable if it can be broken down into layperson's
terms?
Dr Burnett: We will generate until
2010 and there then follows a period whereby we remove the fuel
which takes between 18 months and two years, so that takes us
to about 2012. Then there is a period of preparation for care
and maintenance where all of the facilities outside of the actual
reactor core itself are stripped away and that takes us until
2025. The care and maintenance then continues from that date until
final site clearance in about 2116. In that period you then come
back and remove the core and its contents. That is the established
plan reflected in our strategy.
Q782 Albert Owen: There has been
some movement since your draft. You are a new body but you did
say this would be some 250 years in total. Is 2116 still the end
date or can that be brought forward?
Mr Waite: Shall I comment on that?
One of the issues that we identified in our strategy was that
we wanted to examine the acceleration of final site clearance
and, indeed, we do have the commitment in our strategy now to
create a business case by the end of this financial year site
by site to see whether we can bring forward those end dates. We
believe that final site-by- site clearance of that and all areas
in the future gives us a number of difficulties in terms of maintenance
of skills, socio-economic issues and intergenerational equity
issues, and it would be far better if we could see a way to clear
them earlier. We have talked about a so-called 25 year site clearance
plan but that is a nominal figure. We are investigating during
the course of this year what we can do on a station-by-station
basis and we will create a business case to present to the DTI
if we believe we can do it earlier.
Q783 Albert Owen: I presume you have
been learning from sites such as Trawsfynydd?
Mr Waite: We are. We are learning
not only from our UK experience but we have recently agreed some
collaboration arrangements with EDF who have got some gas cooled
operating stations that they have got advanced plans for as well
and they are looking to clear their sites within circa 25 years.
We are learning internationally as well as from the UK environment.
Q784 Albert Owen: Just one final
question on this. During that timetable, and I know you have already
engaged with the local community, what further issues do you need
to discuss with them? For instance, the socio-economy issues are
important and you were talking about retraining programmes already
engaged on site but I am interested in outside, so what is your
relationship with the local community?
Dr Burnett: We picked up the brief
in April of this year. One of the first things we sought to do
was to find a socio-economic baseline so we joined together with
Anglesey County Council, the Welsh Development Agency and Anglesey
Aluminium to do a baseline study for the island. We have done
that. We did a public presentation of that. The results of that
report will be publicly available. We regard that as a baseline
for all of those bodies and any other bodies that are interested
for the way forward. We now seek to work with the relevant bodies
to look for opportunities to deal with the socio-economic issues
from running down station staff. We still have some time to do
that and a window of opportunity. We look for capital investment;
we look for sustainable things to contribute towards. Over the
next two years, I guess things will come forward and we will continue
to develop that. The site contractor is a full scope contractor.
Part of their contract is to develop these links and to look for
opportunities for socio-economic investment.
Q785 Mark Williams: Have you any
clear estimation for the costs of decommissioning, particularly
in the Welsh context, Trawsfynydd and Wylfa? The latest figure
UK-wide this year was 62.7 billion. In a Welsh context, where
are we in your estimates?
Dr Burnett: The Wylfa whole lifetime
costs are 1.7 billion. I am not sure of the Trawsfynydd figure
but I would have thought it was of the order of three-quarters
of a billion.
Q786 Nia Griffith: Turning to Sellafield,
perhaps you can explain what sort of waste Sellafield receives?
Mr Waite: If I can explain the
process in broader terms, the fuel that the Magnox stations use
gets manufactured in Springfields at a Magnox fuel manufacturing
facility there. We might go on to say a little more about the
implications of that in a minute or two. That fuel then gets transported
to the Magnox stations, Wylfa included, where it is loaded and
the Magnox station at Wylfa has something like 600 tonnes of fuel
per core. Progressively, as that fuel gets burned up, it gets
taken out and sent by rail transport in very heavily protected
flasks up to Sellafield at about a rate of 140 tonnes a year on
a replenishment basis. The fuel goes in; the fuel goes out, so
it is not waste at that point. It is spent nuclear fuel. When
it arrives into Sellafield it goes into a series of facilities,
the first of which is cooling ponds where it sits for a number
of months to cool off, before it is then decanned. The fuel is
decanned of its magnesium alloy coating, just revealing the uranium
metal fuel, which is ultimately put into a magazine and transferred
into a nitric acid dissolution process inside the Sellafield complex,
inside a building called B205. This particular building is the
Magnox reprocessing facility in Sellafield. It is more than 40
years old. It was commissioned and up and running in 1964. It
has been dealing with all of the Magnox fuel from all of the Magnox
stations and indeed has dealt with it very well up until this
point. What happens in that particular building is the fuel is
dissolved. Plutonium and uranium are extracted and turned into
oxide powders for safe storage in Sellafield. The remaining fission
products are then concentrated down during a series of evaporation
processes and ultimately stored as heat generating high level
waste inside the Sellafield complex prior to being taken into
a vitrified cask, which is the long term storage and disposal
concept that has been in place for some time now for dealing with
high level waste. The whole cycle takes the fuel through from
being fuel to dissociated plutonium, uranium and high level waste
in that sense. That then gets turned into the glass blocks which
ultimately will get disposed of or stored, depending on the government's
agreement with the CoWRM recommendations which are coming along
in the summer, as we know.
Q787 Nia Griffith: What happens currently
with it once you have it in vitrified form?
Mr Waite: It is stored. There
is a vitrified product store in Sellafield where the glass blocks
are effectively encased in stainless steel and the stainless steel
canisters are stacked up on top of each other in a series of cells
and stored there until such time as we decide collectively in
the UK what we are going to do with them, which could be longer
term storage still or ultimate disposal in some kind of repository.
Obviously, that is where CoWRM are potentially heading.
Q788 Nia Griffith: What sort of timescale
do they need to be stored for?
Mr Waite: There is a cooling period
in Sellafield. I cannot remember the exact numbers but it is of
the order of a small number of years, from memory, before you
can start shipping it out. It is effectively cooled to be able
to be handled and put into a repository. I cannot remember the
exact number but it is not weeks or days. It is certainly more
than that.
Q789 Nia Griffith: There have been
some leaks of the CoWRM report which was supposed to be coming
out in July. What would you see as potentially the most logical
way to store things in the long term?
Mr Waite: During the CoWRM public
consultation period last year we offered our views in that we
would like to see some form of deep geological repository as a
final resting place for this high level waste, primarily because
that is where all the best practice seems to be heading. The Finns
and so on are heading in that direction. Also, it gives a geological
barrier to the fission product release and so on and we believe
a safety case can be created to protect the environment for the
time required. We made those recommendations to CoWRM. CoWRM,
as you probably already know, have released their draft report.
It came out a week or so back. It suggested that that is what
they are going to recommend but their formal recommendations will
not come out until the summer. If they do recommend deep geological
disposal, we would welcome that. The key issue for us thereafter
is the timing and availability of that repository because clearly
the storage regime we have in place at the moment is linked to
how long the material has to be stored vis a vis the availability
of the repository.
Q790 Nia Griffith: Are there any
suggestions as to where that might be?
Mr Waite: It is far too early.
It would be premature to speculate. We do not even know what the
process will be for site selection because I do not think anybody
has designed it yet. I believe the government has to decide upon
the CoWRM recommendations in the summer before any of that is
considered so I see it as very premature to be even thinking about
sites.
Q791 Nia Griffith: You mentioned
about 140 tonnes per year coming to you from Wylfa. Is that a
correct figure?
Mr Waite: It is the average number.
The fuel that has been sent to Sellafield since 1971 from Wylfa
is around 5,000 tonnes. If you divide the time between 1971 and
now, it comes out at about 140 tonnes a year on average.
Q792 Nia Griffith: That is currently
all still stored at Sellafield?
Mr Waite: No. The vast majority
of that has been reprocessed, the plutonium separated, the uranium
separated and the high level waste vitrified as a result. That
is an ongoing process. The vitrification process does not finish
in Sellafield until 2015. That is the current target and we will
stop vitrification at that time.
Q793 Nia Griffith: Of the 140 tonnes
that you get, you say you vitrify some parts of it. What percentage
of the volume is that and what happens to the rest?
Mr Waite: It is a very small percentage
of high level waste. It is of the order of less than 2% from memory.
The vast majority is recovered uranium because this is uranium
metal fuel. The main construct of that is uranium 238 and that
238 is recovered during the dissolution process. It is separated
out from the dissolved liquor and it is transformed into powder
form for storage in drums for potential disposal or potential
reuse. That is another strategic issue that we have identified
in our strategy document that we are currently working on, the
issue of whether separated, recovered uranium is for reuse or
for disposal.
Q794 Nia Griffith: What volume do
you receive from all of the nuclear power stations?
Mr Waite: I do not have that at
my fingertips.
Dr Burnett: The plant at Sellafield
reprocesses around 800 to 1,000 tonnes a year, if that is helpful.
Q795 Nia Griffith: Can you tell us
a little bit about the life span of Sellafield? Is it going to
go on for ever? Does it have a life span and is there a proposed
last date for receiving waste?
Mr Waite: Yes, there is. The current
plan for closure of the Magnox reprocessing facility is linked
to the time it will take after closure to decommission that plant,
clean it up to meet the overall commitments that have been entered
into by the UK, to meet the OSPAR Convention requirements for
near to zero radioactive discharges into the north east Atlantic
by 2020. When you work back from 2020, you come up with a date
whereby you have to effectively stop operations. Otherwise, you
do not have enough time to diminish the discharges. That current
date for B205, the Magnox reprocessing facility, is around 2012/2013,
which then drives back into the two years that Brian mentioned
in terms of the flow of fuel from Wylfa needing to come at around
2010. You can see from 2010 to 2012 and through to 2020 there
is a programme of activities all linked together to ensure that
those discharge requirements are met. As I said earlier, the plant
is an ageing plant. There are increasing burdens on asset care
and maintenance that are quite significant. Any potential extension
of that plant, setting aside the regulatory commitments and so
on and the international commitments to reduce discharges, would
be quite expensive and also burdened with some risk.
Q796 Nia Griffith: You say it would
be very problematic to extend the timetable if Wylfa was given
an extension. Are you saying it would be problematic to be continuing
to receive waste from them after 2010?
Mr Waite: Yes, very.
Q797 Nia Griffith: You cannot see
an easy way of extending it?
Mr Waite: There is no easy way.
It is not just Sellafield. Sellafield is the primary problem but
there are other problems with extensions which we can discuss
if you wish but Sellafield's problem is those facilities which
are ageing, our need to decommission them and clean them up to
meet the various international commitments that we have. That
drives our current timescale, coupled with the fact that they
are ageing and taking some looking after in terms of the costs
and associated activity of keeping them maintained.
Q798 Nia Griffith: Looking to the
future, if there were a new generation of nuclear power stations,
would you say there would also have to be a completely new generation
of dealing with the waste? In other words, new facilities completely?
Mr Waite: New build, as I am sure
you are aware, is not our domain. In terms of the decommissioning
or waste side of it, it is not necessarily the case that you have
to reprocess fuel. Other countries and we have a concept where
you can store the fuel until you have decay and heat drop-off
to the point where you can consider direct disposal in a repository.
That is the assumption, for example, for some of the plants in
the UK, the more modern plants, that the fuel will not be reprocessed
so you do not need a Sellafield type facility in terms of reprocessing.
What you will need is a store to store the fuel until such time
as you decide that you are going to dispose of it. There are options
around fuel disposal or fuel handling that do not necessarily
mean reprocessing would have to be continued or replaced.
Q799 Nia Griffith: If you do not
reprocess, does that mean that you have to store for longer?
Mr Waite: It depends on how long
it takes to put the repository together so the repository availability
timescale is crucial in that. Again, there is a timescale whereby
the fuel has to be stored to allow it to decay and cool off. It
is in the order of years to allow it to be handled or packaged.
You would have to build a plant to condition it; you would have
to have containers to put it in and so on. You would have to store
those containers and then those would need to be disposed of in
due course. That is indeed our plan for some of the later arisings
from advanced cooled reactors. At the moment that fuel will be
stored and directly disposed of in due course.
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