News / Concern over nuclear waste shipments
A SENIOR Shetland councillor has voiced his concern over planned shipments of high-level radioactive waste from the Dounreay nuclear site to Sellafield, in Cumbria.
Speaking in the wake of the Parida marine emergency earlier this week, council deputy leader Billy Fox questioned the safety of nuclear transports by sea.
It emerged that a delegation from the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) had been in Shetland last month to advise a small group of council officials of their plans.
The decommissioning of the Dounreay nuclear site requires nuclear waste to be moved 400 miles away to Sellafield.
According to campaigners, the NDA is planning to transport 26 tonnes of irradiated and unirradiated plutonium and highly enriched uranium fuels.
A spokesman for Dounreay said the shipments would be an alternative to rail transport and could start as early as this year depending on when the nuclear regulator gave the green light.
The Shetland meeting on 11 September was told that the NDA intended to carry out around 60 such shipments using the 25 year old nuclear cargo vessel Oceanic Pintail.
The 104 metre vessel, able to carry up to 24 flasks containing nuclear waste, was brought back into service in 2012 after plans for a new state of the art cargo ship were abandoned as too expensive, according to the Guardian newspaper.
Fox, who was the only elected member attending last month’s meeting, said assurances were given that sailings were not subject to commercial pressures.
“Why then, was the Parida at sea in the Moray Firth in severe gale force winds, which had necessitated the cancellation of NorthLink operations?
“As a Nuclear Free Local Authority the Shetland Islands Council pays particular attention to what goes on around us in respect of what may affect our marine environment,” he said
He added that it was “absolutely paramount” for the nuclear industry to be regulated and controlled in the “strictest possible terms with no compromise on safety in the interests of commercial pressures”.
“We have a seafood industry which turns over £320million plus in the Shetland economy, more than the rest of our economy combined, including oil and gas! Any risk to this could have disastrous consequences.”
He said he expected Shetland Islands Council to make a more formal statement later this month.
Dounreay spokesman Phil Cartwright said national policy was to move as much as possible of the nuclear waste to Sellafield for storage and future treatment.
“We have a job here to decommission the Dounreay site and therefore we will move the material as quickly as we can taking into account all the safety and security issues.
“The sea route is an alternative route to rail. It will be used on a case by case basis as to most effective way of moving this material to Sellafield.
“We will move material in transport containers that are properly approved for the type of material. The number that moves at a time cannot be disclosed from a security point of view,” he said.
He added that the weather conditions on Tuesday night did not lead to the Parida losing power in the Moray Firth.
“It may have contributed to the rate of the drift of the vessel when it lost power, that is true, but in terms of the decision to sail, that lies with the master of the vessel,” he said.
Meanwhile, Nuclear Free Local Authorities have called for a full investigation into Tuesday’s emergency.
The group’s chairman councillor Mark Hackett said: “The incident confirms a long-held concern of NFLA that such vessels containing radioactive materials remain a major risk in the event of an accident on board, like this fire on the Parida.
“I urge the nuclear regulator, the UK and Scottish Governments and the Transport Committees to investigate this incident thoroughly and consider in much more detail the emergency arrangements and national regulations around such shipments.”
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