THE GOVERNMENT decision to cease reprocessing activities at the Dounreay nuclear power station in Scotland, and to start to close the plant, is welcome news as far as it goes. But the cost of this decision is incalculably huge, the environmental damage unknown but devastating, and the legacy of this white elephant will be around for tens of thousands of years.
Dounreay contains both a prototype fast breeder reactor, which is fuelled by plutonium rather than: the more usual uranium, and a reprocessing plant, which extracts uranium and plutonium from nuclear waste material. The redundant reactor has been closed since 1994, following the government's decision to abandon the fast breeder programme. The decision to cease reprocessing comes after a series of accidents at the plant, and growing evidence of massive pollution and contamination caused by its activities. One of the main concerns was the practice of dumping an unrecorded mixture of nuclear and other waste in a 65 metre deep shaft. This dumping was halted in 1977, after a major explosion which blew off the 12.5 ton lid of the shaft, and showered the area with vast quantities of radioactive matter Experts believe that the risk of a further explosion is still great, and cannot rule out the possibility of 'criticality' - the accumulation of enough fissile material to cause an uncontrolled chain reaction, ie a nuclear explosion.
This risk is compounded by the admission by Dounreay management that they 'cannot account for' 170 kilograms of highly enriched uranium - enough to produce 12 bombs. Management has attempted to reassure the public that this material has been dumped in the waste shaft without being recorded.
The more disturbing possibility is that it has been diverted to nuclear weapons production, or stolen. Security at the plant is so weak that late last year six-kittens were discovered in the heart of the site, having somehow managed to enter and remain there for several weeks undetected.
Following the closure of the fast breeder, Dounreay has expanded its programme of waste reprocessing, in the course of which it has imported and stored waste from countries without the facilities, or inclination, to handle this dangerous material themselves.
The USA, apparently concerned by the possibility of nuclear proliferation, has rejected the reprocessing option. But Dounreay has imported waste from, among others, Germany, Russia, Georgia and India. Despite official denials, it is clear that Dounreay is implicated in the development of the Indian nuclear bomb programme. Reprocessing is an essential part of the nuclear weapons programme. By the turn of the century, 1,400 metric tons of plutonium will have been produced in the spent fuel of nuclear power reactors, and some 300 tons of it will have been separated into weapons-usable form. Less than 18 pounds (8 kilograms) is needed to build a Nagasaki-type bomb. The amounts will continue to grow rapidly. By 2010, there will be 550 tons of separated plutonium in commerce, more than twice the amount now contained in the world's nuclear arsenals. When the first British nuclear reactor at Calder Hall was opened in 1957, the public was told that it would make electricity "too cheap to be metered". It has now become clear that the economic figures were fiddled (with no consideration, for instance, of the costs of decommissioning and waste discharge), while the environmental and social costs were completely ignored.
Life is cheap
In a 1993 application to increase its waste disposal limits, the UK Atomic Energy Authority used an implied value of a human life of €400,000, compared to the EU Commission's value of £2 million. It is only through such distorted figures that any economic case can be made for nuclear energy.
The environmental damage is overwhelming, and will continue for hundreds of thousands of years. The civil liberties implications of continued reliance on nuclear energy are frightening. The decision to begin the closure of Dounreay - and apparently of the notorious Sellafield plant in Lancashire - should be welcomed, and we must continue to press for the complete decommissioning of all nuclear energy plants. We simply cannot afford them. their lives, and the handcuffing to a guard of one of the defendants throughout a three-day stay in a hospital during which he was in a coma.
The laying of criminal charges against Group 4 employees who stated in court that they truncheoned detainees on the head on 20 August.
The laying of criminal charges against Group 4 employees who confessed in court that they, not the detainees, smashed up telephones at Campsfield on 20 August, as stated in public by Michael O'Brien;
• The investigation of possible criminal charges against other Group 4 employees for damage caused on 20 August.
• The immediate suspension of Chief Immigration Officer John Graham and all the Group 4 guards whose unreliable evidence in court and in police statements provided the legal basis for the prosecutions.
• The immediate scrapping of the contract between the government and Group 4 to run Campsfield.
• Finally, the British government has so far failed to respond to the urgings of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, Amnesty International, national trade unions in the UK, Churches Commission for Racial Justice, and the report on Campsfield of the Chief Inspector of Prisons.
We call for the immediate release of all the immigration detainees imprisoned, wrongfully and without being tried or convicted of any criminal offence, at Campsfield and other UK detention centres and in prisons, and the closure of Britain's detention centres.