8th May 2008

See Martin Whiteside's letter on the bid to build a new nuke at Oldbury (pictured)

Greens are horrified by proposals which have just been released to build a new unproven nuclear reactor at the Oldbury, only 16 miles upwind from Stroud (i). A Japanese-US consortium is bidding to construct a £2.8 billion Westinghouse AP1000 nuclear reactor at the site where the existing corroded reactor core is due to close at the end of this year (ii).

Greens have particular concerns about this untested reactor, which to cut costs, has had much of the safety pipework and cabling 'stripped out', only half the protective concrete of other reactors and is planned to run for 90% of the time for 60 years when no Westinghouse has managed more than 58% of the time for more than 34 years (iii). Our nuclear safety regulators are already grossly understaffed, do we really want to buy the first of a kind and be exposed to all the gliches? No reactor has ever been built on time or on budget.

Our MP, David Drew is absolutely wrong to be supporting new nuclear. We haven't sorted out the existing nuclear waste which remains dangerous for up to a million years, let alone all the new waste that will be produced. Nirex, Britain’s nuclear waste management agency, has said Oldbury is at “high risk of flooding”(iv). Plus there will be increased risks of cancer clusters, proliferation of weapons-grade plutonium and terrorism.

The economics don't stack up. The government's own advisors say nuclear reactors simply won't deliver the urgent carbon emissions cuts needed to tackle climate change nor provide secure future energy supplies. Investment in nuclear is a dangerous and expensive distraction from the real solutions: energy efficiency, renewable technology and decentralised energy.

Martin Whiteside
Hillside, Claypits Lane, Thrupp, Stroud
District Councillor and Stroud Green Party Parliamentary Candidate

See Green party news release here

Notes:

(i) See The Times here

(ii) See more here


(iii) The Westinghouse website 'boasts' the following cash-saving features on the "innovative" AP1000. Stop Hinkley/Shut Oldbury suggests that reactors fare better with more not fewer safety features.
• 50% fewer safety-related valves
• 80% less safety-related piping
• 85% less control cable
• 35% fewer pumps
• 45% less seismic building volume
http://www.ap1000.westinghousenuclear.com/ap1000_glance.html

But the Westinghouse has far to go before it gets a go-ahead in the UK. The Nuclear Installations Inspectorate has a three year timetable to establish the safety of four potential reactor designs, including the AP 1000. The AP1000 may suffer problems in this process due to its novel cash-saving design known as 'Advance-Passive'. Much of the safety pipework and cabling has been 'stripped out' (2) compared to previous Westinghouse designs such as Sizewell B in Suffolk, with only half as much protective concrete.

On the issue of safety 'containment' in the event of a loss of coolant accident (LOCA) the high pressure and temperature steam and hydrogen liberated during the reactor primary circuit failure is contained within the first of two large domes. The first containment dome is surrounded by a second cooling dome. Following a LOCA the inner containment dome is cooled by allowing outside air to circulate up between the two domes, naturally convecting and exhausting through a chimney-like hole in the top of the outer dome - this natural process supposedly provides a failsafe means of 'passively' cooling the reactor fission products trapped inside the first containment dome.

"All very well in theory" says Nuclear Consultant John Large, "but if the initial LOCA is sufficiently violent, as it might be if triggered by a terrorist attack, so that the inner containment dome fails then this chimney arrangement will then act to efficiently suck out and throw the radioactive release into the atmosphere for subsequent dispersion and fall-out." Westinghouse hope it will operate for 90% of the time for 60 years but no Westinghouse nuclear power plant has operated for more than 58% of the time for more than 34 years.

(iv) Nirex, Britain’s nuclear waste management agency, reports in its summary of ‘Climate and Landscape Change’ that seven out of eleven current nuclear reactor sites are not viewed as fit for new nuclear reactors or nuclear waste sites. Four will be vulnerable to flooding and three others vulnerable to coastal erosion. Berkeley and Oldbury are cited as having a “high risk of flooding”, while Hinkley is at risk of “flooding and erosion”.