LYING, FALSIFYING, AND OVEREXPANSION, OR WHY

THE SUN IS SETTING ON THE BRITISH NUCLEAR EMPIRE

The history books may have gotten it all wrong. According to them, the pinnacle of the British Empire has passed—the sun does now set on the Empire. Great Britain is a world power, to be sure, but a minor one, to be reckoned with but no longer knelt to. That’s what our children learn today; but Great Britain seems to have a different plan…

It’s unlikely it’s a plan set down on paper. It may not even be a deliberate plan, maybe it’s just the happenstance of a declining nuclear era.

But, deliberate or not, Great Britain is embarking on a strategy that could make it the world's most important nuclear power within just a few years. Not the world’s most important nuclear weapons nation—that won’t happen; but the globe’s most essential component of a new era based on deriving energy from atomic fission.

Under this strategy, planned or not, the 21^st century will be powered increasingly by nuclear reactors, and the new British Empire will be there, every step of the way, to control and profit from the brave new atomic world.

Two expansionist-minded companies, the recently privatized British Energy and the still fully government-owned British Nuclear Fuels Ltd. (BNFL), are leading the charge for a new global atomic revival.

It’s a huge gamble for a world increasingly skeptical about nuclear power, but if it pays off, Great Britain will once again be a multinational empire. If it doesn’t, well, is Britain really any worse off?

That’s what the policymakers and corporate executives in England must be thinking. Let’s roll the dice and see what happens.

Unfortunately for them, the dice so far haven’t rolled up sevens, they’ve rolled up Sellafield.

BRITISH NUCLEAR FUELS

Sellafield is the center of the British nuclear dream, and the centerfold of its current nuclear nightmare.

Sellafield is run by a British government-owned company called British Nuclear Fuels. Ltd. (BNFL). For many years, BNFL and Sellafield were to Britain what Hanford, Savannah River, Rocky Flats and Duke Power were to the U.S.: this was how and where the atomic bombs were made, this is how we power the facilities, don’t ask us any questions and we won’t lie to you.

The most significant nuclear reactor accident, other than Chernobyl, occurred at Sellafield—(which then had the bucolic name of Windscale) in 1957. Radiation spewed from a damaged reactor, causing the impoundment of milk in nearby towns and still-unknown radiation exposures among local people. But it was the beginning of the atomic age, and people didn’t question like they do now. Sellafield kept on humming, dumping radiation into the North Sea.

As a government corporation, BNFL did the government’s bidding. In the early days, that meant building atomic weapons. Somewhere along the way, BNFL realized that the weapons business has a very limited future and expansion potential. So BNFL decided that it would take its nuclear expertise and become the world’s largest nuclear power entity. And, with the support of the British government, that’s exactly what it’s doing.

BNFL already was engaged in uranium enrichment; through its own plant and its part-ownership of the European enrichment firm Urenco (which tried, unsuccessfully, to build a new uranium enrichment plant in Louisiana during the 1990s). It also was involved in reprocessing, and built a brand spanking-new facility called THORP to handle its expected new reprocessing contracts from across the world.

But that wasn’t enough for the expansion-minded organization. In the past few years, it has gone headlong into the nuclear power business. First it bought reactor manufacturer ABB/Combustion Engineering, which itself was a consolidation when ABB, a Swedish company, bought the U.S. firm Combustion Engineering. That purchase made BNFL a player in the international reactor construction sweepstakes and owner of the U.S.’s oldest atomic fuel fabrication facility, in Hematite, Missouri..

Then BNFL bought the nuclear division of Westinghouse—the world’s largest reactor manufacturer. That brought not only commercial nuclear contracts to BNFL, but also management of many of the U.S. Department of Energy’s nuclear weapons sites. Suddenly, BNFL became the world’s most important builder of nuclear reactors, including a nice little plum—the recently Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved AP-600 "advanced" reactor design, conceived by Westinghouse.

Meanwhile, BNFL had brought its "nuclear services" division to the U.S., and was competing for contracts from both DOE and from nuclear utilities. That led to a highly controversial contract to take apart part of the old uranium enrichment plant at Oak Ridge, Tennessee—a cold war relic. But simply garnering the contract wasn’t enough for BNFL, they wanted to not only be paid for the decommissioning of the plant, they wrote into the contract that they would "decontaminate" the metals—especially the valuable nickel—in the plant and "recycle" them in the open market.

Never mind that BNFL obtained the contract by stating that it had done similar work in Britain—which it hadn’t. And never mind that the deal was a "sole source" contract, meant to be buried in an avalanche of other typical government contracts. It was found out. And now, embarrassed, the DOE has said the nickel, which is volumetrically contaminated, cannot now be released, even while BNFL continues to take the plant apart, and is apparently selling everything but the nickel on the open market. But the nickel is where the money is.

BNFL also successfully bid to build a radioactive waste incinerator at Idaho Falls, upwind from Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Big mistake. Jackson residents—who are on average a little wealthier and more connected than most, embarked on a campaign to stop the incinerator. On March 27, 2000, they won. DOE announced it would not build the incinerator, and, in fact, would look into other methods of "disposing" of the waste that would have gone to the incinerator.

But these are just minor setbacks compared to what BNFL did to itself.

It began in the Fall of 1999. Even while a lethal accident at the Tokaimura uranium processing plant was making world headlines, BNFL was sending a shipment of MOX (mixed-oxide, or plutonium-based) fuel to Japan. The Tokaimura accident was caused by workers mistakenly—and without following proper procedures—preparing uranium fuel for use in Japan’s MOX reactors. It wasn’t a good time to be shipping MOX fuel—and protests met the ship even while it docked in port.

Chagrined over the failures of its nuclear program that led to the Tokaimura accident, Japanese officials examined BNFL’s shipment more closely than ever. And they didn’t like what they saw.

The quality assurance records for the MOX fuel were identical to those that had been shipped before. Similar would have been ok—even expected. Identical raised questions. In the wake of Tokaimura, serious questions.

And, as it turned out, BNFL employees had falsified the records. They simply wrote down information that had been developed for earlier MOX shipments; the tests, they said, were too boring to conduct and since everything was probably ok, why not just write down a few numbers generated previously? Japan demanded that BNFL take back the shipment, which BNFL was loath to do: after all, what are a few fake numbers between friends?

So began the unraveling of BNFL.

Ireland, on the other side of the North Sea from Sellafield, and never a friend of BNFL, started demanding shutdown of BNFL’s reprocessing operations. Germany, under pressure from the Green Party to end reprocessing anyway, said it did not want to honor its contracts with BNFL, and by the way, BNFL probably falsified quality assurance reports for fuel provided to German reactors. Then Germany said that BNFL had "lied" about Germany’s position.

Denmark joined in the attack, and so did Sweden. BNFL’s chief executive resigned, under fire, to be replaced by the CEO at Virginia Power, one of two U.S. utilities involved in its MOX program, which would rely heavily on BNFL’s expertise.

Investigators from Britain’s own Nuclear Installations Inspectorate (NII) found that BNFL had indeed lied about MOX fuel fabrication issues.

Switzerland joined in the fray against BNFL. Then came news that BNFL’s own workers had engaged in serious acts of sabotage against the company.

Even British Energy said it would no longer reprocess fuel with BNFL, and instead asked for a sensible radioactive waste policy.

About ½ of BNFL was to have been "privatized" during 2000—even the organization’s staunchest supporters admit that can’t be done now. No one would invest in this company.

The bigger question is whether BNFL can sustain reprocessing of nuclear fuel at all—and right now, the odds seem slim. But the attacks on BNFL haven’t stopped at reprocessing.

In late March, several dozen U.S. groups (including NIRS), calling BNFL a "global environmental criminal," filed a formal petition with the Department of Energy to bar BNFL from any work for the DOE. The 14-page petition (available on the Government Accountability Project website, www.whistleblower.org) details numerous allegations against the company. Meanwhile, DOE Secretary Bill Richardson said he would send a team of investigators to England to examine the company’s safety record and procedures.

By the end of March, 2000, the question became not whether BNFL would become a shining star in a new British nuclear Empire, but whether BNFL can even survive. Even its chairman, Hugh Collum, in late March said that it is time to think the "unthinkable," that BNFL may have to close its core operations: its reprocessing and MOX fuel business.

BRITISH ENERGY

When the Thatcher/Major government decided to sell off Britain’s electric utilities a few years back, there were no takers for the country’s nuclear reactors. The government decided to privatize them anyway, and created British Energy (BE) from the existing bureaucracy. The company operates eleven reactors throughout the United Kingdom.

The first thing BE realized it had to do to compete in the private sector was to cut costs and reduce staff. Unfortunately, downsizing quickly became BE’s corporate forte and by 1999 it had cut so many staff that the government’s Nuclear Installations Inspectorate (NII) prepared a scathing report warning that BE had cut essential safety-related staff to the point that safety could become compromised, that the remaining staff was working far too much overtime, and that BE had developed an over-reliance on outside contractors who were not always familiar with the reactors they were working on (see Nuclear Monitor, October 1999)

It didn’t take long for the NII’s warnings to become realized. Before the report was even released, a series of safety-related incidents and shutdowns took place throughout the company’s nuclear fleet, cutting into both BE’s image and its 1999 and projected 2000 profits.

However, BE is still profitable, for now (although its aging reactors and corporate attitude bring its long-term economic health into question), and just as expansion-minded as BNFL. In 1997, BE teamed up with Pennsylvania’s PECO Energy to create a new company, Amergen, to buy and operate U.S. reactors going on the auction block from a combination of poor economics and utility restructuring.

So far, Amergen has purchased and is operating Three Mile Island-1 and Clinton, and has contracts to purchase Oyster Creek and Vermont Yankee—all for pennies on the dollar. Amergen also is seeking to buy Nine Mile Point-1 and –2 and has even applied to the NRC for a license transfer for those reactors. But part-owner Rochester Gas & Electric balked at the terms, and instead wants to sell those reactors to the Entergy Corp. That one may end up in court.

Meanwhile, NIRS is contesting the license transfer for Oyster Creek (see Nuclear Monitor, January 2000) and Citizens Awareness Network and the State of Vermont are challenging the license transfer for Vermont Yankee. The interventions are on similar grounds: that Amergen does not have financial resources to safely operate a fleet of far-flung reactors (PECO Energy and BE initially put up a total of only $110 million for Amergen; in late March they upped their commitment to $200 million, apparently as a result of the interventions), and that British Energy, by virtue of its performance in the U.K., should not be allowed to operate in the U.S. —Michael Mariotte