On November 12th, it was discovered that the shoes of 18 workers' at the Dounreay nuclear complex in Caithness on the NE Scotland coast, were contaminated with radioactive particles.
Two workers had traces on their hands while one had them on his face. This is the latest in a long line of contamination incidents at the complex, which have included a 1977 explosion In a alsused shalt lat was usel ds d dump for radioactive waste, when a wide area was contaminated.
The media are calling Dounreay a reprocessing plant, but it in fact it contains two fast-breeder reactors (FBRs), currently being decommissioned, along with the rest of the site. ause complex is owned by the (nationalised) Atomic Energy Authority, but decommissioning is being carried out by numerous private contractors. under private management.
The process is expected to cost £4bn, and take 60 years, although environmental organisations claim the real figures are E10bn and 100 years. A lot of the decommissioning will involve reprocessing - the separation and concentration of nuclear fuel. Opposed
Reprocessing is strongly opposed by environmentalists because it can lead to handling accidents like that on November 12th and it increases the availability of nuclear-bomb ready plutonium (Pu) and highly enriched uranium.
Reprocessing of nuclear fuel currently produces about 15-20 tonnes of Pu a year worldwide, enough for 3,000 bombs the size of the one dropped on Nagasaki. It's estimated that by 2010, there will be 100 tonnes of Pu in the UK (16,000 Nagasaki bombs).
The closure of the FBRs in 1977 and 1994 mark the failure of a 40-year long experiment in nuclear power, initiated in the age when it was predicted that the electricity generated would be "too cheap to meter".
It was anticipated that massive expansion in nuclear power would put pressure on world uranium supplies. Conventional (thermal) nuclear plants consume U(235), which is only 0.7% of naturally-occurring uranium. The rest, U(238) is often used in depleted uranium shells and armour, nium in an FBR, while the heat from the process is made into electricity using turbines, as with "normal" nuclear plants. The Pu-rich fuel can then be reprocessed to make mixed oxide fuel" for conventional reactors. The main FBR construction programmes are in China and India. In the west, heRs are now essentially redundant, as there is plenty of plutonium for the imperialist ruling classes' bomb needs and nuclear power is in decline. Expensive nuclear electricity in Britain (about 20% of the total) cannot be produced
to generators. but it can also be converted into plutobomb-making materials. or supported. It is cheaper to extract urani-. um from the ground than to use FBRs. was ten times too high.
Far from being "too cheap to meter",
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European Social Forum Winter 2002