Publication Laka-library:
Managing UK Nuclear liabilities (1997)
| Author | M.Sadnicki, MacKerron, SPRU |
| Date | October 1997 |
| Classification | 2.05.0.00/44 (UNITED KINGDOM - GENERAL) |
| Front | 
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From the publication:
MANAGING UK NUCLEAR LIABILITIES 1 INTRODUCTION 1.1 Nuclear liabilities: the need for reappraisal 1 Nuclear liabilities are the costs of dealing with the unwanted products of the nuclear age. These products - radioactive wastes, spent reactor fuel and redundant nuclear structures - have been accumulating over fifty years of nuclear operation. Even if, as now seems likely, there will be no new nuclear power stations in the UK, the legacy of liabilities is large and unavoidable. Indeed, the commonly quoted figure for total UK civil liabilities is £45 billion. 2 Many strategies (1) for nuclear liability management have reached a critical stage and require fundamental reappraisal. Three developments illustrate this. • Firstly, the dismissal of Nirex's appeal against the refusal of planning permission for a Rock Characterisation Facility near Sellafield has raised major questions about deep disposal of radioactive wastes. • Secondly, there are numbers of areas of growing concern with respect to current or planned future BNFL operations at Sellafield: the levels of radioactive emissions from THORP to the atmosphere and the sea; the rationale for continued reprocessing of spent fuel; the future of plutonium stockpiles; and the planned opening of the facility for manufacture of plutonium-based Mixed Oxide (MOX) Fuels. • Thirdly, the privatisation of British Energy and discussions about the merger of Magnox Electric and BNFL have cast a critical spotlight on the scale and funding of nuclear liabilities. The current authors have previously drawn attention to the severely limited scope of the Segregated Fund (2) set up to meet British Energy's liabilities and to the substantial funding shortfall for Magnox liabilities. (3) (1) There is no general agreement about the meanings to attach to words like strategy and policy. In this report we use the terms policy and policy objectives to refer to the general setting of frameworks, as for instance in Government White Papers. In the pursuit of policy objectives, various options may be considered, and from these options, strategies for dealing with particular categories of nuclear liability can be developed, where strategy implies a specific pathway, usually with costs and time- frames attached. (2) In this paper, Segregated Fund with initial capitals refers specifically to the current British Energy Segregated Fund; without capitals to any other segregated fund - either specific or general. (3) G.MacKerron and M J Sadnicki, 'No Minister, sums don't add up', Guardian, 25 June 1996; M J Sadnicki, Nuclear Privatisation: Working Notes, 24 August 1996, (available from COLA).
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