Examination of Witnesses (Questions 48-59)
MONDAY 26 NOVEMBER 2001
DAVID BONSER
AND GEORGE
BEVERIDGE
Chairman
48. We now have Mr Bonser, who is the Transformation
Director, which is a title to grapple with, I think, and George
Beveridge, who is the Director of the Nuclear Decommissioning
and Clean-Up (Europe). What did you think about the Irish ad.?
(Mr Bonser) Perhaps, before I answer the Irish ad.,
Mr Curry, I should also explain I am Chairman of Nirex, and I
am a member of the Radioactive Waste Management Advisory Committee,
RWMAC. George is also a director of Nirex, he is a BNFL-nominated
Director of Nirex, which I think is important, given (the context
?).
49. Thank you very much indeed for that autobiographical
precision. So what do you think about the Irish ad.?
(Mr Bonser) The Irish ad. is a matter for the Irish
Government, I guess, and also the UK Government, in that it is
looking at a decision that the UK Government has made to okay
the Sellafield MOX plant, and it goes rather further than that
and asks for the closure of Sellafield.
50. You do not agree with it though, you know,
chin out? I am just trying to make sure, I am just checking?
(Mr Bonser) No, I do not agree with it. For example,
the natural background radiation that somebody in Ireland, the
average person in Ireland, receives is 2,500 units, and the critical
group there, in other words, the most exposed people in Ireland,
as a result of the Sellafield discharges, receive two units, an
additional two units to the 2,500, on average, that somebody in
Ireland receives. I believe, and BNFL believe, that that is an
acceptably small additional radiation dose, and, indeed, the RPII,
which is the Radiological Protection Institute of Ireland, forgive
me if I have got the precise words wrong, would also say that
that is a small—I quote from their 1999 Annual Report: "Radiation
doses to Irish people resulting from Sellafield do not pose a
significant health risk to people living in Ireland. The Institute
advises that it is safe to continue eating fish and shellfish
landed at Irish fishing ports and enjoy the amenities of the Irish
Sea."
51. Right; we will move on now. I just wanted
to check on that. You are Chairman of Nirex.
(Mr Bonser) Yes, I am.
52. Now we have just had evidence given by Nirex,
in the mood of almost suffocating reasonableness, if I may say
so, and they have just given me a flavour of consulting on absolutely
everything, ad infinitum; it made one wonder why they were
there at all, really. Now you are Chairman of Nirex, but, in your
BNFL hat, you say that this consultation document is far too blooming
long and it is all going to be kicked into the long grass and
we should have something much shorter, crisper and sharper and
get on with it. Is that a fair summary of your view, as a company?
How do you square the two?
(Mr Bonser) The consultation document is entitled
`Managing Waste Safely' and I think BNFL's position is that there
are a number of aspects to managing radioactive waste, one of
which is disposal, and that is really the aspect you have been
talking to Nirex about; and BNFL would agree that to have a successful
disposal facility is going to take time and is going to need wide
consultation, and so on, in the way that Nirex have explained.
But there is a lot more to radioactive waste management than just
disposal; there is radioactive waste coming today from operating
reactors, from other processes that are going on within the industry,
there is a whole legacy of waste that has been produced over the
last 50 years, or more, of both the weapons programme and then
the early stages of the nuclear power programme, and those wastes
need to be treated. And you have talked a little bit about storage
and processing for storage, and it is in those areas, in particular,
that BNFL feel that waiting seven years for a policy is waiting
too long.
53. You are committed to a deep repository solution.
Do you think that, quite frankly, the science is done and dusted
and what we are now talking about is finding a way in which some
community or other can be found to accept the repository, or do
you think that we should actually be revisiting the science, and
there are other potential sites and other potential methods which
ought equally to be brought into the equation?
(Mr Bonser) Some of the science which Nirex undertook
was questioned, both at the public inquiry and since, in the intervening
four years. We believe that the science that Nirex did was largely
good science, and it is not just us, others have said that as
well, but that there should be a review of the science that was
done to establish if there are some gaps, and where there are
gaps those gaps should be filled. The science is a very, very
important part of an acceptable solution for disposal, but it
is not the only part; as Chris Murray was saying, there are the
social issues, the political issues, and so on and so forth, which
need to be looked at. And so, as we sit today, I would say that
the science is the most well-developed, if you like, of the various
aspects that are needed to get a successful disposal facility.
Mr Drew
54. If we can talk about the issue of transparency,
you have been holding these consensus conferences for some time
now, it does not seem that you have convinced those who are opposed
to nuclear power that these are a good thing, and let alone nuclear
power. Can you explain why you have had such a limited impact
on people's ideas and feelings towards this industry?
(Mr Bonser) Yes. BNFL have been undertaking, what
we grandly call, the BNFL national stakeholder dialogue, for the
past, I think, three years, and that is one of the many ways of
getting stakeholder involvement. There has been a UK CEED consensus
conference, I am sorry to use these jargon terms, which is a different
way; there are other things like citizens juries, and so on, where
you can get different things in. Coming down to the UK national
stakeholder dialogue, I feel that has come a long way; for example,
last year, the stakeholder dialogue produced an agreed waste management
document, which was published by the people who convened this
stakeholder dialogue, although BNFL fund it and we sponsor it,
as it were, and we participate fully, it is convened by an independent
group, called The Environment Council, and they published this
document, and indeed it was submitted to Mr Meacher. And I was
privileged enough to be one of the group of people, which also
included the Chairman of Friends of the Earth, that took this
document to Mr Meacher and explained this was a statement from
that stakeholder dialogue of an agreed position on waste management.
I think that is a significant step from where we were three or
four years ago, where, I remember, the very first of those meetings,
people from BNFL felt that they really ought not to be talking
to these nasty green people, because they were there to do away
with our jobs, and my impression was that many of the greens felt
that they were supping with the devil from a very long spoon.
And it has moved a long way, and I think there is a better understanding;
there are still significant differences of opinion on things like
reprocessing, whether it should or should not be done, but, nevertheless,
there is an awful lot more, where I feel we are getting to is
that there is a lot of common ground. I think everybody now recognises,
and did at the time, that the waste exists, it needs to be dealt
with and it needs to be dealt with safely and competently, and
so on, and that is common ground, which we can then say, `right,
we have that common ground, how can we move forward on that.'
And the bits that are not common ground, well, maybe we are not
going to get full agreement on those, but, nevertheless, we can
understand why it is we have such different views on the basis
of common facts.
55. Is it not somewhat flawed though; and this
is, obviously, partly wearing your Nirex hat, you are looking
here for a stakeholder dialogue, on a policy formulation process
which, if it is going to include as many people as possible, has
to have a degree of consensuality? And yet, this issue, and we
have already got agreement from the previous participants in our
discussions today that there is no agreement amongst experts,
there is no independence in this issue, people have completely
made their mind up; so what is the point of carrying on with this
dialogue?
(Mr Bonser) The point is that I think that by getting
people together in a room and talking you are much more likely
to find a solution than by not getting them together and talking,
and continuing what one of the greens has described as the traditional
forty-years war that has been going on. And, from personal experience,
and I have been to every one of these meetings as they have gone
through, I am a strong believer in the process, it changes BNFL's
view, it changes BNFL's employees' view, that it is not just about
science, there are other issues which need to be taken into account.
And equally I believe that some of the greens, and, let us be
clear, it is not just BNFL and greens, there are many other stakeholders,
there are customers, there are local communities, there are local
authorities, there are many other people who come, regulators
come, Government Departments come, to that, there are 100 or so
organisations that come to that stakeholder dialogue. But just
by hearing and comparing notes and trying to understand what other
people's positions are and their points of view, you have much
more likelihood of finding a solution. And if you, as we have
got to the point that everybody accepts the waste is there, it
has got to be dealt with, that is quite an important starting-point,
and if everybody in the room is trying to find a way forward,
you have got a much better chance of finding that way forward
then just keeping in your separate silos and lobbing bricks at
one another.
56. Can I move on to two specific areas then
where you have drawn some criticism. The THORP plant was shut
down earlier this year; why was it shut down?
(Mr Bonser) The main reason that the THORP plant has
been shut down, for various types anyway, is because of what is
known as the downstream plants. THORP itself is a reprocessing
plant, and although it is a very large and complex facility it
does not have everything within THORP to carry out its full role;
and it shares facilities, other facilities, on the Sellafield
site, and these are mainly waste processing facilities. You mentioned
high-level liquid waste, earlier on, and the vitrification of
the high-level liquid waste; that whole thing is shared between
the THORP reprocessing and Magnox reprocessing, so it is that
type of facility. And we have had some difficulties with some
of those downstream plants; those have had to shut down and that
has meant that THORP has had to shut down.
57. So the allegation from Cumbrians Opposed
to a Radioactive Environment, that you had a specific problem
to do with the high levels of liquid, high-level waste, that is
not true?
(Mr Bonser) One of the main pinch-points in the operation
at Sellafield is the high-level liquid waste facility, and that
is high-level liquid stored in tanks; that liquid then passes
on to a vitrification facility, which converts the liquid into
glass, and the capacity of that, and the tanks fill up as high-level
liquid waste comes from the reprocessing plants and the tanks
empty out as the liquid is vitrified. And we have had difficulty
with the vitrification plants, and that means we have not been
emptying the tanks so quickly. We have agreed with the regulator,
with the NII, a curve of the volume of high-level liquid we will
have on Sellafield over the coming decades, up to 2015, where
it will be for now, and we have agreed that level and we have
agreed that we will not go over that level. And so it is very
important that we operate our facility, so that then if it looks
as though we are getting closer to that level we will shut down
facilities to keep within that level.
58. What do you do with the material when THORP
is not operating, do you just have to store it, as you do with
all the other waste material?
(Mr Bonser) What THORP does is, it takes in fuel at
one end, processes it, dissolves the fuel up in a chemical plant,
and then you get high-level liquid waste, is one of the things
that comes out of THORP; so when you shut down THORP you do not
keep producing the high-level liquid waste, you just continue
to store the fuel, as fuel, in plants.
Patrick Hall
59. Vitrification, as I understand it, is a
means of stabilising what is otherwise a highly dangerous and
unstable product. So the failure to have a reliable means of doing
this, through the plant that you have just referred to, that you
have had problems with, is obviously something that undermines
confidence in seeking solutions, or achieving solutions. This
has been going on for some years, has it not, the difficulties
with that plant?
(Mr Bonser) Yes, it has.
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