Reprocessing the Truth

1. Introduction

The proposed extension of BNFL's reprocessing facilities at Windscale is the thin edge of the nuclear wedge. Although Mr. Justice Parker claims that such an extension need not have any bearing on future policy and development of nuclear power, it is clear that THORP - the proposed Thermal Oxide Reprocessing Plant only has practical and economic advantage if Britain is to embark on an aggressive fast breeder reactor programme. Despite his statements to the contrary, he has to a large extent pre-empted the outcome of any future hearing on Britain's first commercial fast breeder reactor.

There is a perfidious logic in Parker's report which could dangerously mislead anyone ignorant of the fundamental issues associated with nuclear power and the atomic cycle. Parker has a way of twisting the argument so that the objectors' case seems to support BNFL's. Thus he manages to argue that instead of increasing the chances of proliferation, reprocessing actually reduces them: instead of incurring a greater threat from radioactive waste, it diminishes it: and instead of leading to a greater drain on energy resources, it actually augments them.

At issue with the Inquiry was the future shape of our society and a number of objectors argued that if mankind is to survive, an alternative must be found to our present high energy, growth orientated lifestyle. Parker listened to them but gave them no credence. He accepts the status quo of our industrial society without question, arguing that only nuclear energy can give us the power to progress. Yet no evidence emerged at the inquiry to show that nuclear energy is a viable option for the future, or that our industrial system can be sustained in the long-term. The thesis of A Blueprint for Survival and The Limits to Growth still stands, and Parker fails to come to grips with its implications. Indeed, in plumping for BNFL's limited view of the future, he and his assessors have despatched us down a one-way street to moral, ecological and social bankruptcy.

2. The Answer to Pollution?

2.0. Corrosion or Storage

The first generation of Britain's nuclear power stations, the Magnox reactors use fuel elements which corrode if left too long in their cooling ponds. No one disputes the need for reprocessing magnox fuel in order to prevent radioactive contamination of the cooling ponds, and hence the environment. Parker has used the same argument to justify the reprocessing of oxide fuel from Britain's Advanced Gas Reactors. AGR fuel is clad in stainless steel, and Mr. B. F. Wamer of BNFL stated at the inquiry that because of corrosion "it would be imprudent to store substantial quantities of stainless steel clad fuel in ponds for more than a decade." His statement that AGR fuel corrodes came as a surprise to objectors. As late as November

1976, more than ten years after implementing its AGR (Advanced Gas-cooled Reactor) programme, the CEGB had only just begun to make preliminary enquiries about the storage of stainless steel clad fuel. It contacted four American companies to find out what their exprience had been with such spent fuel. In reply the companies stated that they had had no problems to date with fuels stored for up to seven years, nor did they expect to find any.

"It is worth noting", says Walt Patterson of FOE, "that until the paper submitted to the Inquiry by the UKAEA - which is undated but which appears to have been produced after the commencement of the Inquiry - there does not seem to have been any published paper anywhere raising any doubt about the performance of spent fuel in water storage." Considering BNFL's lack of research on the subject, it is curious that Mr. Parker should rely on its evidence.

2.1 Vitrification

On the assumption that spent fuel, which contains considerable quantities of plutonium, will corrode, Parker argues that extracting the plutonium during reprocessing will diminish- environmental pollution. The high level wastes produced by reprocessing contain some 1000 times less plutonium than does intact spent fuel. "Our responsibilities to future generations therefore appear to demand reprocessing", he states.

Parker accepts that "if permission to develop is granted and if BNFL go ahead as planned, there will be more plutonium and uranium separated; more discharges to the sea and the atmosphere; more material for burial at Drigg; more dumping in the deep oceans; and more storage of highly active waste." He believes, however, that these are all problems that cau be controlled. Professor Ivan Tolstoy is less optimistic.

Reprocessing makes the management and disposal of nuclear wastes "more dangerous and more difficult" than conventional storage. The liquid wastes boil unless constantly refrigerated and they must be kept in special tanks. Moreover alongside the high level wastes proper, there will also be large quantities of chopped up fuel cladding and other plutonium contaminated trash.

A thousand years or more will nave to pass before the radioactivity in such tanks has reduced through decay to anything like acceptable levels. To overcome the intractable problem of maintaining such tanks for a millennium, atomic energy experts talk of vitrifying the waste into glass blocks to be disposed of in geological sites. It is generally agreed that the glass blocks will disintegrate over a long period of time, but it is claimed that the amount of radiation released will be negligible.

Parker therefore argues that once disposed of the glass blocks are safer than intact spent fuel would be, primarily because they contain so much less plutonium. If the spent fuel rods should break, the consequence "could be particularly serious", says Parker, "for not only might the plutonium get back to man as such, but it might accumulate, for example in a clay deposit, reach a critical mass and then release highly active fission products." That appears to beap admission on Parker's part that Mevedhev's story about the 1958 explosion in the Urals, in which several hundred square miles were devastated, could contain more than a grain of truth. Is it not significant that only a few months ago, Sir John Hill informed us that such an accident was impossible?

Favouring vitrification over conventional storage does not, however, put an end to the problem of waste disposal. It might do if the vitrification process had been perfected but Harwell scientists have not so far come up with a satisfactory technique that can be used industrially despite 25 years experimentation. Indeed there is growing evidence to suggest that their search is a vain one.

Tolstoy, for instance, points out that the heat emitted by the radionuclides may fracture the glass - a possibility reinforced by studies at the University of Grenoble - and that if the glass cylinders are disposed of on the ocean bed, as suggested by the NRPB, their fate cannot be predicted with any precision. Nor are those the only problems associated with waste disposal. The fission products, caesium-134 and 137, and strontium-90, must be isolated for not less than 600 years: americium-241 and plutonium-239 for half a million years or more and other actinides for even longer. Even should the vitrification process prove possible, it is impossible for the wastes to be kept isolated from the biosphere for such long periods.

Yet Parker accepts unhesitatingly BNFL's word that its HARVEST vitrification programme will be a success and that the technique of waste disposal will be mastered. One million years ago, civilization did not exist: in the meantime we have had an ice-age and gigantic geological upheavals. How on earth can BNFL predict what will happen in the next one hundred millennia?

2.2. Two evils

Waste disposal is just one example of how, by opting for nuclear power, we have forced ourselves to make an impossible choice between two evils. On the one hand, we can adopt conventional storage techniques, and risk an explosion like that in the USSR. On the other we can put our trust in an untried technology, which to date remains unproven. There are alternatives to nuclear power but by refusing to discuss the fundamental question of whether a nuclear future is either right or acceptable, Parker has virtually taken upon himself God-like rights to decide this enormous moral question for us.

2.3. Permissible levels

Reprocessing unleashes a cascade of radionuclides, a proportion of them escaping through the factory stack into the atmosphere and being released - at authorised levels - into the sea and waterways. Aqueous discharges include caesium-134 and 147, strontium-90, tritium, iodine-129, ruthenium-106; zirconium-95, niobium-95 as well as a number of alpha emitters such as plutonium-239. Atmospheric discharges include krypton-85, tritium, carbon-14, iodine-129, ruthenium106, strontium-90 and alpha emitters.

Parker does not consider that their release in any way invalidates his argument that reprocessing will reduce pollution. He believes that so long as the permissible levels established by the ICRP (International Commission on Radiological Protection) are adhered to faithfully, the, public will be fully protected from dangerous levels of exposure to radioactive pollution. Are we really so well protected by ICRP's standards?

2.4. Ignorance

We are too ignorant of all the factors involved to be able to set standards that have very much more than symbolic value. Even Hetherington, a witness for BNFL, acknowledges that "the appalling lack of useful information of the chemical form of transuranics and for that matter a lot of other nuclides in the environment leaves no scientific foundation for assessing detriment." Still less do we know about the different pathways whereby radionuclides enter into contact with men, nor the precise way in which they affect living tissue.

It is generally conceded that there is no threshold dose below which radiation levels can be regarded as safe. Parker accepts that any radiation over and above that from natural sources must do biological harm. The question is not therefore a purely scientific one, but. a moral one: how many extra cases of cancer and congenital diseases are a just price to pay for the extra fuel that THORP will put at our disposal and the extra money it will earn for us be reprocessing Japanese wastes?

2.5. Low Dose Radiation

Because of our ignorance of the, dose response relationship we are in the dark when it comes to fixing levels. The ICRP assumes the dose-response relationship to be linear. However, as Bowen pointed out at the Inquiry, new information suggests that it may deviate from the linear at very low doses, the biological damage being proportionately greater at the bottom end of the dose-response curve. That notion was curtly dismissed by Parker, although it fits with data obtained from other sources, indeed Dr. Alice Stewart gave evidence of a 26 percent increase in cancer among the labour force of the Hanford Atomic Energy Works in Washington State, the increase indicated a 20-fold higher effect of radiation in cancer-induction than accepted by ICRP.

Parker did not find Dr. Stewart's evidence "impressive" and he berated her for adopting "too patronising an attitude" towards her rival, Dr. Gilbert, whose research was cited by BNFL. He also misrepresented Professor Rotblat's evidence so as to suggest that he, too, contested Dr. Stewart's evidence. Intact Rotblat had simply not been given time to study her evidence, to see if he agreed with it. Elsewhere he states explicitly that he considers current permissible levels to be too high. Bowen's evidence, as well as that of Rotblat and Stewart, fits in well with further evidence not mentioned at the Inquiry, which shows an alarmingly high incidence of cancer among workers habitually handling radio-active material in a naval dockyard in the USA.

2.6. Levels Too Lax

Levels fixed in the past have always been too high, and have had to be reduced no fewer than four times since 1931. Then the recommended permissible dose for occupational persons was 73 rems a year. This was reduced to 50 rems in 1936, 25 in 1948, 15 in 1954 and 5 in 1958. On what grounds does Parker believe that the experts who fixed the last permissible level are more reliable than their many predecessors?

On the contrary there is good reason. to suppose that the ICRP's approach to the fixing of permissible levels has grown laxer over the years. Ichekawa points out that "In 1954 ICRP strongly recommended that every effort should be made to reduce exposure to all types of ionizing radiation to the lowest possible level. By 1958 it was recommending that all doses be kept as low as practicable, and that any unnecessary exposure be avoided. That was further altered in 1965 to, all doses be kept as low as is readily achievable, economic and social considerations being taken into account. That was revised partially in 1973 to as low as is reasonably achievable."

These shifts from first to last represent an obvious regression of ICRP policy. Equally suspect is the fact that ICRP has not reduced permissible levels since 1958 despite the wealth of evidence that low dose radiation is more harmful than previously believed.

2.7. New Information

Is it because of their vested interest that members of ICRP have not kept abreast of the latest developmEmts in radiobiology? Thus permissible levels for inhalation of plutonium are based on the estimated radiosensitivity of the lung, but the lung may not be the critical tissue. New information reveals that the radiosensitivity of the bronchial epithelium is much more sensitive than the lungs to soluble particles of plutonium.

Radford maintains that the air standard for exposure to insoluble plutonium should be lowered by a factor of about 200 firstly because the capacity of plutonium to induce lung cancer has been underestimated 20-fold, secondly because the radiosensitivity of the bronchial epithelium has been underestimated 10-fold. In spite of Professor Radford's being a member of the US National Academy of Sciences Advisory Committee on the biological effects of ionising radiation, his evidence was rejected. Mr. Parker faulted it on the basis of unconvincing statistical technicalities. If it were taken into account then THORP could never be built.

Along with the ICRP and BNFL, Mr. Parker also assumes that inhalation is the only critical pathway. Relatively large amounts of plutonium can be eaten, he says, "without appreciable harm." This is an indefensible assumption for it is based on the notion that plutonium is. insoluble in living tissue. This is backed. by a few experiments with animals, which as Bowen points out are open to very serious criticism. Mercury too was once considered insoluble in tissue hence harmless. Nevertheless hundreds of people have died of mercury poisoning and thousands more grotesquely deformed at Minnemata and in Iraq. How do we know that the same is not true of plutonium?

Manfred Siebker, nuclear physicist and member of the Club of Rome; suggested such a possibility in The Ecologist (May 1977). This would appear to be the only explanation for a recent appreciable increase in the plutonium content of vegetation in the Hanford area. It also seems the only way of explaining the high values for plutonium in the urine of the resettled native population of Bikini Atol.

BNFL claims that plutonium's main pathway to man is from the Windscale stack and it is on that basis that measurements are made of likely biological damage. As Bowen points out, BNFL is ignoring at least three other sources of plutonium contamination: the dusts that escape the filter systems in the exhaust stacks; the sediments that wash up on the beaches, a portion of which become windborn and the atomization of transuranic particles by the action of waves on the shore.

"Examination of the inhalation pathway associated with resuspension of contaminated sediments was only seriously started in 1976," says Bowen, "even though sediment wash-up and blowing away had been known to the Department of the Environment since 1969." That this is not. a trivial problem is indicated by the information in Mr. Hermiston's testimony that the mean air concentration of plutonium particulates in the area of the Ravenglass estuary was about ten times the mean in the surrounds of the Windscale works.

No specific limits have been set on discharges of plutonium into the sea. They are included in a block limit on alpha emissions. That limit masks the appreciable differences in the biological effects of alpha-radionuclides. Thus, as Bowen points out, "even though radium 226 and plutonium are both bone-seeking elements in mammals, plutonium has 10 times greater effectiveness in bone cancer induction, because it is deposited close to the most radiosensitive cell layers while radium is deposited throughout the mineral layers."

Worse still BNFL includes in its alpha-emissions only the plutonium 249 discharged directly to the sea. Conveniently it does not take into account other alpha-emitting radionuclides such as americium-241 into which plutonium-239, a beta-emitter, transforms. Bowen considers that "if americium's higher absorption efficiency and higher toxicity were taken into account, it would be reasonable to multiply the estimated plutonium exposure by 10 times or more." Why do BNFL not take americium discharges into account?

2.8. Radioactive Emissions

Parker fully accepts BNFL's assurances that THORP can be built to such high design standards that although the throughput of irradiated fuel will increase considerably the discharges will be lower than at present. The credibility of this claim rests on the nuclear industry's past record. In 1962 Williams and Davidge of the UKAEA claimed that although nuclear capacity would increase to 8,000 megawatts by 1971 "the effluent discharged to the sea associated with this installation will be about one quarter of the total discharge level in 1959 to 1960". The releases in 1971 should then have been of the order of 25,000 curies. In fact they were over 200,000 curies, or 16 times the levels predicted.

What explanation does BNFL have to offer? Why is it that the British government rejects the strict emission standards set by the EEC? The technology exists to reduce. substantially radioactive discharges from reprocessing plants and is already being made use of in Germany. Why has BNFL not adopted it? Is it because the economics of reprocessing militate against excessive care? Or is it simply because large scale reprocessing is inevitably a dirty business?

Caesium 134 and 137 are just two radioisotopes that have already slipped BNFL's safety net, and between 1972 and 1976 the quantities discharged rose from 25,000 to 136,000 curies. Even the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAFF), has shown concern, for according to the Fisheries Radiobiological Laboratories (FRL), fish taken near the Windscale outfall pipe contain enough caesium to produce one third of the ICRP maximum permissible dose, in those who eat it regularly (The Canadian nuclear industry manages to keep emissions down to 1 percent of the maximum permissible limits).

Nor does dispersal by dilution work as effectively as once believed: radioactive levels in the sea water are only a factor of 13 lower across the sea off the coast of Ireland. The actual levels in fish may have been underestimated. MAFF scientists do not actually measure levels in the fish themselves but only in the sea water: they then multiply the levels by 30, on the basis that fish concentrate caesium by such a factor. That assumption is based on experiments with plaice which, as Radford points out, is a relatively poor concentrator of caesium. It would be more realistic, says Radford, to assume that levels in fish are 60 to 70 times higher than in the surrounding sea-water.

BNFL makes no attempt to control either the emissions of tritium or of krypton-85 and carbon-l4. As an isotope of hydrogen, tritium combines with oxygen to form water, and hence becomes part of the hydrological cycle. Carbon-14 is also readily metabolised by all living matter. In his testimony Dr. Spearing suggested that carbon-14 presented a greater threat to life than any other radionuclide discharged during reprocessing.

Professor Fremlin stated at the inquiry that krypton-85 released from Windscale would constitute but a trivial increment to the total inventory of discharged radionuclides. According to. Dr. Boeck, of the International Commission of Atmospheric Eiectricity natural krypton-85 scarcely existed in the atmosphere until we put it there. The Windscale plant will release over 15 million curies per year thus adding some 230 million curies to the environment: that is about 20 million times natural background levels.

Bowen points out that "all of the low level releases to the environment currently occurring contain long lived radio-isotopes which are being discharged at a rate exceeding the rate at which their radioactivity is decaying. In consequence there is a gradual and insidious build-up of environmental radioactivity, and there is a very real risk of irreversible contamination of our planet to a degree that will impose a severe burden of human suffering." So much for our responsibility to future generations.

2.9. Synergy

Nor do any of the authorising bodies take account of synergistic effects between radiation and other carcinogens to which industrial populations are exposed. As Blacksmith points out, uranium miners who smoke more than 20 cigarettes a day have a much higher rate of lung cancer (13.3 cases per 1,000) than would be expected if the cancer rate from working in a uranium mine and that from smoking 20 cigarettes a day were additive (3.91 cases per 1,000). Selikoff also found that of 283 asbestos workers who smoked cigarettes 24 died from bronchogenic cancer compared with the expected number of 2.98. A considerable proportion of adults in industrial cities have been found on autopsy to have asbestos particles in their lungs. Synergic effects are very widespread and it must be remembered that we are subjects to an increasing amount of toxins, of which plutonium is only one.

2.10. Critical Groups, Critical Pathways

British policy towards authorised discharges from Windscale is governed largely by their assessment of the exposure to radiation of a critical group, that is a section of the public which through its activities and its location is most exposed to radiation. The philosophy behind this approach is that so long as the dose rates to the critical group remain within permissible levels then the public at large will be safeguarded. That assumption is dependent on our understanding not only of the behaviour patterns of the critical group how long they spend where and when - but also on a full understanding of the physical and biological behaviour of radionuclides discharged from the Windscale works.

Only those radionuclides considered relevant to a critical pathway are examined. Thus the uptake of ruthenium by porphyra seaweed is followed because the seaweed is used for making laver bread in South Wales. Another critical group is made up of adults who may walk on the mud flats of the Ravenglass estuary. So long as they do not spend more than 300 hours a year on the mud flats, we are told, they will be safe.

Thus BNFL are careful to choose those critical groups that are not too critical. The authorities chose to ignore those who are forced to spend 24 hours a day near the mud flats, those in Ravenglass village who live in houses fronting directly onto the estuary. No measurements have been carried out to see what amounts of plutonium or other radionuclides they are inhaling. No levels have been fixed for atmospheric discharges.

Do we really have the right to predetermine human behaviour in this way for all time to come? What happens if those living at Ravenglass want to spend more time on the estuary? Or if the locals develop a taste for laver bread? Those and many other options must now be closed forever. The truth is that everybody will eventually fall into the category of a critical group. Moreover many people will belong to several critical groups at once, and what happens to them?

2.11. Spurious Precision

In his report Parker includes a chart indicating the radionuclides discharged during reprocessing and their contribution to maximum permissible levels via critical pathways. Despite the greater intended throughput of spent fuel, THORP is to discharge just over half the quantities of radionuclides of its Magnox predecessor. In view of BNFL's past record with discharges, and the enormous fluctuations from year to year, in view of its ignorance concerning the fate of radionuclides in the environment, in view of the paucity of research on critical pathways little value can be attached to BNFL's chart. That figures in the chart are given with extreme precision down to one hundredth of one percent is unimpressive, and can only be regarded as an attempt to mislead the Inquiry.

2.12. Engineering Feasibility of THORP

BNFL has convinced Parker that it will succeed in reprocessing oxide fuel commercially where others have failed, and that it will be able to do so without contravening the authorised discharges laid down by MAFF and the DoE. Professor Barry Shorthouse, an experienced chemical engineer, explained that BNFL was likely to run into severe problems with its proposed pulsed column. Scaling up such columns from the laboratory to large commercial units could lead to all kinds of difficulties, he said, especially in a system where intense radioactive decay would constantly be altering the properties of the solvent. In conventional chemical industries, one can tolerate a bang or two, since in general the damage is limited; one cannot tolerate that kind of incident in a reprocessing plant. Parker preferred the evidence of Warner, BNFL's engineer to that of Shorthouse.

2.13. Risks

Mr. Parker accepts Warner's assurances that the chances of a serious accident at Winscale are no more than one in a million. But what were the chances of two jumbo jets colliding on the runway at Las Palmas airport? One in a million? Yet it occurred. What, too, the chances of all the OPEC ministers being kidnapped together at a meeting in Vienna and flown off to Algiers? More than one in a million? Yet it occurred. When we are dealing with a small, inoffensive device like a typewriter an accident is not so serious: when we are dealing with a passenger aeroplane, there is more cause for concern: and in the case of such complex and dangerous devices as a nuclear power station, the risk becomes intolerable.

2.14. A Chapter of Accidents

BNFL's assurances that the risks of accidents are extremely low cannot be taken at their face value. Hiding behind the Official Secrets Act they have consistently failed to disclose accidents when they occurred. Charles Wackstein has made a study of these accidents from the limited amount of material that has been made available by BNFL. From published material he could only find reference to 28 incidents. BNFL however, have now produced a list of 177, most of them not hitherto disclosed to the public. If the over lap in the second list is eliminated it emerges that a total of 194 accidents and incidents have occurred between 1950 and mid-1977, 11 of which involved fires or explosions and about 45 releases of plutonium. What is more, contingency plans in the event of an accident, were either non-existent or totally ignored.

Wackstein accuses the nuclear industry of failing to learn from experience. But could it ever? W. C. Charmers, formerly a chief engineer at Windscale, makes the point: "I do not think the country can operate with an acceptable standard of safety an extremely dangerous plant like Windscale under current standards of respect for law, national and personal morals and discipline in social and industrial affairs. This has been demonstrated by the fact that the Windscale workforce was prepared to hazard public safety in pursuit of a minor financial objective." Might not a later generation occupy the plant and threaten sabotage if their demands are not met?

3. Our Energy Future

3.0 Saving Energy

In order to outflank the objectors BNFL stressed from the .beginning that reprocessing was a means of saving energy, since the gleaned uranium and plutonium could be used for fuelling new reactors. Parker liked that argument, and he sets out to show that recovered uranium would be worth more in energy terms than all the best efforts of those producing energy by alternative means - wind, wave, water, sun. According to Parker, recovered uranium if used in AGRs would yield some 15 percent more energy, whilst if the plutonium could be used as well, the total recovered energy would be raised to 30 or even 40 percent.

Without doubt Parker's figures are over-optimistic, for he assumes that the nuclear industry will be able to used mixed plutonium uranium oxide fuel in thermal reactors. On the basis that only the recovered uranium will be used in thermal reactors, Professor Rotblat reckons that the energy savings will amount to no more than 1 percent of total energy consumption - a paltry amount when the total costs of THORP are taken into account. "As far as helping to fill the energy gap is concerned," says Rotblat, "reprocessing of fuels from thermal reactors is irrelevant."

The supplies of uranium which can be extracted economically for use in thermal reactors are unlikely to last much beyond the end of the century should the nuclear power programme proceed as desired by protagonists. Indeed Price of the uranium institute pointed out that the sophisticated techniques used by the oil industry for exploration are not available for seeking out uranium, and discovery of high grade uranium in the future cannot be guaranteed. On that basis recovered uranium through reprocessing would stretch supplies for less than a decade.

3.1. Commitment to the FBR

Parker also insists that the go-ahead with THORP does not constitute a commitment to the fast breeder reactor. He argues that there are sufficient stockpiles of plutonium from the reprocessing of spent Magnox fuel "to keep open the option, not merely of CFR 1 the first commercial fast breeder - but also of a follow on FBR programme of 8 FBRs with a total generating capacity of 10 GW(E)."

Parker's argument is contorted, for as he well realises, both Magnox stockpiles and plutonium bred in the ,FBRs will be insufficient to sustain an FBR programme beyond the end of the century. No wonder then that he rejects FOE's demand for a 10-year moratorium on THORP, and urges that the plant be built now to avoid a backlog of AGR fuel, which, if there were a 10 year delay, would have to be reprocessed at four times the rate, sometime towards the end of the century .

THORP in fact makes little sense unless we build FBRs to utilise the plutonium, and as a corollary to that, once we have THORP we will have little choice but to proceed with the FBRs. Hence government approval of THORP is tacit approval of the FBR programme. But do we really gain by embarking on such a programme? The assumption with FBRs is that they will breed sufficient plutonium from uranium-238 to sustain not only the original plant in fuel but also to provide at the same time for another new plant.

Hence an FBR programme should in theory be capable of growing exponentially. The other theoretical advantage of the FBR is that it can stretch uranium supplies by a factor of 50 or more through its being able to convert the bulk of otherwise unusable uranium into plutonium. Clearly nuclear power protagonists see countries like Britain developing a base of thermal power stations from which FBRs will mushroom.

But not only are FBRs very much more expensive to build than thermal' reactors, and still more dangerous to operate, it is exceedingly dubious whether they can breed sufficiently fast to sustain themselves in fuel let alone to sustain an additional reactor. It is hoped that the first commercial FBRs will breed sufficient plutonium in 25 years to. fuel themselves and an additional FBR. In fact the prototypes have doubling times in excess of 40 years, and it is not certain whether the breeding rate can be improved in commercial reactors without incurring severe financial and operational penalties. Furthermore, since the lifetime of an FBR is unlikely to exceed 25 years, the original reactor will at best have bred sufficient fuel for its own replacement. It is thus unlikely that breeder reactors will ever be able to generate enough plutonium to increase their original population.

The size of this population must therefore depend entirely on the amount of plutonium obtained from thermal reactors and as we know, by the end of the century, long before a serious programme of breeder reactors can be got underway, world uranium supplies on which these thermal reactors depend, will have been largely exhausted. It must thereby, even in the best conditions, remain an extremely marginal source of energy, very much more marginal that solar, wind or wave generators or any other alternative sources.

At a recent energy conference in Florida, American nuclear physicists agreed that the FBR may prove to be the biggest white elephant of all time, far more so than Britain's present AGRs or Concorde. Yet in Britain, France and in all likelihood in West Germany, plans are in effect to proceed with FBRs. Parker himself points out that so much time, effort and money has been expended on nuclear power that writing it off at this stage would be almost impossible, hence his need to justify it by spurious arguments of energy conservation and of the likely success of a nuclear power programme.

The marginality of nuclear power is beginning to be appreciated, Professor Carroll Wilson, director of the Workshop on Alternative Energy Strategies, at MIT, asked experts from 15 countries to estimate what proportion - of their country's energy requirements would be likely to be met by nuclear power in the year 2000. The average answer was 20 percent, and although they took into account logistical problems involved in building power stations and associated facilities, it was taken for granted that the necessary capital would be available.

Since in America many nuclear power station projects are already being cancelled for want of capital, those assumptions seem to be rash. Their calculations also ignored the likely disruption of nuclear development by the increasingly powerful anti-nuclear lobby, whose efforts in Germany have already led to a veritable moratorium on the building of nuclear power stations. Carroll Wilson's own assessment, allowing for the total range of the problems, was that 10 percent was a more realistic figure; as for FBRs he did not expect them to make a contribution to total energy requirements of more than 0.5 percent.

The case for nuclear power rests on estimates by the Department of Energy that by the year 2000 energy demand in Britain will have increased to between 450 and 560 millions of tonnes of coal equivalent (mtce). Parker accepts that Government estimates may have to come down further than they already have, but he avoids spoiling his case for THORP by admitting that they may come down to the levels forecast by those promoting alternative energy options.

"None of the evidence given, has led me to believe that it would be otherwise than imprudent not to continue to develop nuclear technology and keep the nuclear industry in a condition to meet a sudden expansion in nuclear power should it be required, be that expansion in thermal reactors or in FBRs ... to divert available resources to such efforts (the alternatives) to an extent which would prejudice a large scale reliance on nuclear power, should it be needed, would it seems to me," says Parker, "be an act of bad management for which this and future generations might justly blame the government ... "

Parker, and presumably those in the government forecasting the role of nuclear power, appear to be oblivious to the enormous sums of money - required to sustain a growing nuclear power programme. Nor do they seem to appreciate the 'tightwoven interrelationship between the fossil fuels and nuclear power. Indeed nuclear power may seem a cheap option, but that is only because its very existence and future depends on the cheapness and availability of fossil fuels. In the past economists fell in the trap of thinking that nuclear power would become cheap relative to the fossil fuels. Once the price of the latter rose substantially. OPEC's price rises put paid to that notion, and it has now become apparent that inflation has hit nuclear power with even greater effect .than it has other fuel sources.

In Britain if we go ahead with an FBR programme the situation will get worse. Mr. Parker suggests that Britain should build two FBRs (each of 1.25 gigawatts) each year, even if we could find places to site these monsters on our tiny island they are likely to cost something like £2,000 million each at current prices. This means that we will be spending each year 80 percent of all the capital that is presently available for investment in this country just on building two power stations.

We know that the two main constraints to which. our energy programme must be subjected are capital availability and the lead time. There is no question whatsoever that the form of energy that requires the least capital and that can be made available most rapidly is energy conservation. In order to avoid a major economic discontinuity it is in this field that the vast majority of our energies should be concentrated.

As Gerald Leach of the International Institute for Environmental Development pointed out in his very valuable testimony (which was totally ignored by Mr. Parker) the scope for energy conservation is immense, to take one example, satisfactory house insulation could reduce household energy consumption to as little as 40 percent of its present household annual average, and let us not forget that household energy consumption accounts for 30 percent of primary energy use in Britain.

4. Finance

4.0. Good Investment?

Parker accepts BNFL' s contention that reprocessing is good business. A dry-storage technique for unreprocessed spent fuel, BNFL claims, will cost the customer some £225,000 per tonne compared with its estimated price of £260,000 per tonne of uranium after reprocessing in THORP and vitrification. That latter price assumes a plant big enough to take foreign wastes. Since the uranium and plutonium gained through reprocessing are worth something, Parker subtracts their value from the reprocessing costs and comes up with a figure showing that the customer will save by employing THORP.

All the figures are sheer speculation; none, for example, knows how much vitrification will cost, and it is curious that Parker and BNFL have omitted the costs of long term disposal of the vitrified waste even though they have included those of long term dry storage. Indeed, Professor Tolstoy points out that the cost to the United States of disposing of the million tonnes of solidified waste which will have accumulated by the end of the century might well top $23 billion. Moreover, a recent Swedish government report indicates that the cost of combined reprocessing and disposal may be double that of disposal without reprocessing.

Colin Sweet, an economist, got short shrift from Parker. Why so? Sweet is thoroughly sceptical of BNFL's costings for the new plant. "The West German nuclear consortium, RWE, estimated recently," Sweet reports, "that building a new 1,400 tonne oxide plant would incur some £1,116 million in direct costs and £2480 million in total costs to be compared with BNFL's figures for THORP of £500 million. The URG price for reprocessed fuel is £370,000 per tonne."

Sweet then shows (See The New Ecologist No. 1, January 1978) that the CEGB's claim that reprocessing - assuming the Japanese investment in the plant - would cost 8 percent of the total costs of nuclear' generated electricity, is a blatant underestimate. Sweet's figure is closer to 20 percent, and that of a much higher total cost figure.

The losses in reprocessing "have been very impressive", writes Professor Albert Wohlstetter in Foreign Policy (Winter 1977), "General Electric's Morris, Illinois plant, which cost $64 million had to be abandoned without ever going into operation. The Allied General Nuclear Services plant at Barnwell, originally estimated to cost about $50 million actually has cost $250 million so far, and may take about $1 billion in total to complete in accordance with current requirements. Getty's Nuclear Fuel Service Plant in West Valley, New York, shut down for modification after about $30 million in gross sales. It might require some $100s of millions just to dispose of the radioactive wastes from its previous work." If reprocessing is so easy, so safe and so financially remunerative, why were all these, and other, projects abandoned?

If BNFL is to be saved from incurring a vast financial loss it is because Britain is prepared to prostitute herself and take in Japanese waste. During the Inquiry representatives of Friends of the Earth and The Windscale Appeal were allowed to peruse the contract signed between BNFL and its Japanese counterparts, and found the terms extremely favourable to BNFL. Public anxiety over radioactive pollution makes it impossible for the Japanese nuclear industry to proceed with its nuclear programme unless it can export its high-level radioactive waste elsewhere.

For that reason, it is ready to pay anything to get rid of them. "The proposed Japanese export of spent' oxide fuel for reprocessing in THORP", says Professor Ichekawa, "is part of a general tendency of Japanese industry to export pollution, such as mercury-polluting factories to Thailand and other Asian countries". It is indeed sad that Britain should now figure among those countries whose governments are willing or can be cajoled into mortgaging their future for a quick buck.

5. Unemployment and THORP

5.0 Costing the Job

THORP is expected to cost at least £600,000,000 and will provide one thousand new jobs. Parker dismisses as "out of touch with reality" those who argue that the capital cost per job created is inordinately high and that the money can be better spent elsewhere. But does he really believe that Britain can afford jobs at such a price.

Because of increasing numbers of young people seeking jobs, greater employment of women and increased automation, the labour market is now growing by 150,000 to 160,000 a year. If recorded unemployment were to be reduced in Britain to 700,000 (which a few years ago would have been an entirely unacceptable level) by 1981 - two years later than the government once hoped - it would probably be necessary to create between one and 1.9 million new jobs. With capital investment likely to remain under £5 billion per annum, we have only some £13,000 available for each job that has to be created.

The adoption of a 'soft energy path', involving investment in solar collectors, wave energy and conservation techniques will provide very many more jobs, both directly and indirectly, than will further commitment to nuclear technology If we are to achieve full employment in Britain then we must reconsider the assumptions on which present employment policies are based. Our government is still committed to the outdated notion that investment in heavy industry is a prerequisite of economic success - and hence of new jobs.

Everywhere we see signs that these industries ate failing arid can only be sustained by injections of government funds. The nuclear industry is tarred by the same brush. If the dole queues are to be diminished, and the unemployed given the jobs they deserve, we must escape from our obsession with capital-intensive industries that we cannot afford. [For a fuller discussion of unemployment see The Ecologist Quarterly, Spring 1978).]

6. Proliferation

6.0. Proliferation and Terrorism

Reprocessing, remarks Professor Rotblat, was developed for the extraction of plutonium for weapon making, and once large quantities of plutonium are shifted around the globe, the risks of proliferation must be increased. Faced with what seems an unanswerable case, Parker, to everyone's astonishment, insisted that the building of THORP rather than favouring proliferation will actually contribute to its prevention.

He bases his case on his complete confidence in the Non-Proliferation Treaty as a guarantee against the spread of nuclear weapons, but as Professor Rotblat pointed out this has not prevented non-signatories such as France, China and India from developing the bomb. Nor is there anything to prevent a non-nuclear party to the treaty from developing a nuclear device right up to the penultimate stage of actually testing it.

6.1. Britain's Moral Responsibilities

Even more far-fetched is Mr, Parker's argument that if Britain does not build THORP other less technically reliable and less socially responsible countries will undoubtedly do so - and hence there would be far less control over the sale of plutonium. As Dr. Cochran, of the National Resource Defence Council, points out, that argument has all the smugness and self-righteousness of that used in Parliament in the 18th century to defend the slave trade. It was argued that if Britain opted out of the slave trade, she could only relinquish it to her rivals, the Spanish and the Dutch. Thus to ensure the humane treatment of the slaves, Britain should stay in the game.

Nor is it very likely that Third World countries, however politically aggressive, will have either the cash or the technical know-how to build up their own reprocessing plants. If Pinochet's Chile or Amin's Uganda wish to get hold of plutonium, they will surely find it easier to buy it on the black market. When the availability of plutonium for sale rests on the construction of just such plants as BNFL proposes at Windscale, how does Parker have the temerity to suggest that Britain's venture in large scale reprocessing will diminish the opportunities for proliferation?

6.2 Legal Technicalities

Mr. Parker's final argument on the proliferation issue is equally far-fetched. Affecting a sincere concern with legalistic technicalities, he assures us, on the basis of various obscure clauses in the NPT, that BNFL have an obligation to reprocess spent fuel not only from its own reactors but also from abroad. That such an obligation defeats the very object of, the treaty does not seem to occur to him: his only concern is that our undertakings be honoured. Yet what is at question is not our present obligations but whether any non-proliferation treaty which favours the expansion of nuclear power can be made fool-proof. The history of treaties is, after all, the history of broken treaties.

6.3. Terrorism

'Horizontal' proliferation of nuclear weapons by States which hitherto had not. been nuclear is by no means the only conceivable route by which weapons fall into the wrong hands. Clandestine terrorist groups, such as the Baader-Meinhof gang, or the Italian Red Brigade, are already proving themselves capable of striking at the very heart of governments. Dr. Kit Pedlar has indicated that sufficient unclassified information is available in the archives for any motivated physicist to make a crude nuclear bomb. Eminent physicists who have worked with atomic devices find the plans highly credible. Does anybody doubt that today's terrorists will hesitate to use such a device if they get possession of it?

6.4. Technical Fixes

The very availability of information on how to make an atom bomb is a powerful argument against mass producing plutonium and shipping it around the world. Yet, Parker believes that access to plutonium by subversive organisations can be denied through technical fixes. Characteristically he selects only those arguments that suit his case. Containers with nuclear material can be spiked with radioactive material, suggests Parker, and newly manufactured fuel elements briefly irradiated to make them awkward to handle.

"To return plutonium so spiked", says Jeremy Bugler in the New Statesman, "BNFL will have to know the design details of each foreign reactor it is serving, fabricate the fuel correctly and then build plant to do the irradiating. Only three years ago the US Regulatory Commission concluded that spiking would not be 100 percent effective against terrorists let alone rogue governments. Slipshod is not too hard a word for this piece of Parker."

6.5. Civil Liberties

Parker's treatment of Civil Liberties verges on fascism. He goes further than arguing that surveillance will be necessary if civil liberties are to be protected and our democratic institutions maintained. He states that those who are most vociferous in the defence of justice and liberty may well be setting out to weaken the enforcement of law and order so that they can unobtrusively take over. "A campaign to lessen surveillance, ostensibly to preserve civil liberties, could therefore be mounted by people whose aim was not the preservation of such liberties but increased opportunities to further their own destructive ends." It seems to have escaped Parker's notice that other forms of energy do not present terrorists with such golden opportunities for holding society to ransom, and hence do not pose such a threat to civil liberties.

6.6. Ignorance and the Public

According to Parker public anxiety over nuclear power is the result of ignorance. "It is the lack of information which renders some members of the public suspicious of those who operate the nuclear industry and exposes them to anxieties which are needless" he writes. "However irrational and misplaced they-may be anxieties undoubtedly exist and are elements which must be taken into account." But who is to blame for this lack of information? In dealing with BNFL objectors have found themselves up against a bastion of secrecy. Indeed employees are loyal to the point of dishonesty.

Thus a film shown at the Inquiry, Caging the Dragon, records an interview with BNFL's safety operator Donaghue, in which he denies that more than 28 accidents had ever occurred at Windscale. Parker does not even note this blatant cover-up. Instead he turns film critic and castigates the film for misrepresenting an accident at Windscale, because it does not record the real thing, using instead clips of a flare stack at a coke works to illustrate the 1957 fire, and pictures from a medical journal to portray a radiation victim. Does he suggest that the fire at Windscale was less violent, or that radiation does not inflict horrific bums?

7. Conclusion

That Parker's decision was predetermined is clear to anyone who attended the hearings and has studied the testimonies. What was particularly shaII!eful about the Windscale Inquiry was the apparent objectivity of the proceedings, with Parker at all times giving the impression that he was bending over backwards to give everyone a fair hearing.

Yet his report is an ingenious hotch-potch of half-truths; when he could not ignore the arguments of objectors he chose to distort them. Far from allaying the fears of objectors, as Peter Shore would have it, the report has hardened them in their conviction that their battle is not only with BNFL, but with an all-powerful nuclear mafia, which has enlisted the support of scientists, engineers and government officials. Together they constitute a force that not even the Minister of Energy can resist through the normal process.

We cannot doubt that Mr. Justice Parker believes in the policy of perpetual industrial growth and as a result we are all now being asked to support the personal ambitions of a small coterie of scientists and technocrats. There might be some justification for the nuclear power industry if it. could be shown unequivocally that the energy it unleashes is essential. In fact, nuclear power, for all the money it has soaked up, is probably more marginal than any other source of energy.

The more we become committed to it, through the machinations of the policy-makers, the more swiftly shall we find ourselves bankrupted and our social system undermined. What about radioactive pollution? What about derelict nuclear power stations? What about the real risk of devastating accidents, of terrorism and proliferation? Parker has ridden roughshod over these issues.

Since reason and truth no longer prevail at Public Inquiries we must not delude ourselves that the FBR Inquiry will go the way of the objectors. At stake is the very survival of the nuclear industry and with it its bodyguard of powerful friends. They will not be easy to overcome. Nuclear power without the FBR is nonsense; hence any country wishing to perpetuate its nuclear industry has no choice but to push ahead for all it's worth, in order to make use of cheap uranium to build up sufficient stockpiles of plutonium to power the fast breeder.

We call on all those who object to the FBR to boycott the coming Inquiry and instead commit themselves to a programme of non-violent, civil disobedience. We believe that no option is left to us if the scourge of nuclear power is to be stopped, as it must be, if we are to preserve our country and our planet.