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Publicatie Laka-bibliotheek:
Airliner Crash on Nuclear Facilities. The Sellafield Case

Auteur	WISE Paris
	2-05-8-30-13.pdf
Datum	oktober 2001
Classificatie	2.05.8.30/13 (GROOT-BRITTANNIË - SELLAFIELD - ALGEMEEN)
Voorkant

1. Sellafield Particularly Exposed to Plane Crash Risk
Among the nuclear facilities located on the British territory, the scenario of a targeted plane crash on
BNFL’s Sellafield facilities would be the most extreme in terms of impact on the environment and
public health: the spent fuel reprocessing facilities in Cumbria represent an inventory of radioactive
substances several orders of magnitude larger than that of a nuclear power station. The site is used to
store hundreds of cubic meters of liquid high level waste, thousands of tons of irradiated fuel, tens of
tons of separated plutonium.
Sellafield vulnerability regarding an aircraft crash stems in particular from the 1,550 m3 of liquid high
level waste in storage, which represent a non conditioned and therefore very volatile inventory of
liquid fission products. In addition, over 75 t of separated plutonium in powder form were in storage
on the site as of 31 December 20001.
With its French equivalent in La Hague, the Sellafield site concentrates the largest inventory of
radioactivity in Europe. With nominal reprocessing capacities of 1,580 t per year of Magnox fuel for
the B205 plant and around 1,200 t of oxide fuels for the B570 THORP2 plant, Sellafield differs
however from the La Hague site3 by the way reprocessing have been operated during the last decade.
Frequent operational problems have led to low load factors of the reprocessing lines during the last 11
years, as well as the waste conditioning facilities. During these years, waste has been accumulating
year after year of which hundreds of cubic meters of liquid high level waste.
The unavailability of the vitrification facility, which has achieved a production of only 34% of its
nominal capacity over the last decade, made the temporary stock of liquid fission products grow to
more than 1,550 m3 as of September 2001. That situation has been considered unacceptable by the
Nuclear Installations Inspectorate in late September 2001. The subsequent closure of the two
reprocessing plants on 22 September 2001 can be interpreted as BNFL’s response to the NII warning.
Opening of two of the three vitrification lines in October 2001 (according to BNFL) will not rule out
the particular risks that will continue to remain for years.
In January 2001, the NII issued BNFL with a Specification (a legal order), which limits the volume of
liquid high level waste to 1,575 m3, lowers this limit by 35 m3 per year until 2012, and requires a
subsequent reduction to 200 m3 in 2015; thereafter, BNFL would be permitted to store 200 m3 of
liquid high level waste as a buffer stock. This Specification is designed to accommodate BNFL’s
business plan, and to minimise the cost and inconvenience to BNFL of reducing the stock of liquid
high level waste.