Testing Torness Britain's Acid Exports
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61 Testing Torness p3 Britain's Acid Exports CONTENTS COMMENT Testing Torness 3 At the time of writing, Edinburgh is in the PETE ROCHE gives o round-up of recent middle of the Internat ional Festival •. This events a t our own local nuke. News 4-8 always brings anti-nuclear visitors from groups Chernobyl ond the Media. 9 all over the world, on holiday but not above THOM DIBDIN report$ from the Ecovision a visit to SCRAM to tell of a demonstration '87 Conference. at Wackersdorf (8-10 Oct }, or to discuss views As Safe os Houses? 1·1 PATRICK GREEN discusses the Government's on privatisation. We've also been visited by half-heorted a ttempts to solve the roovn the Greenpeoce boat, Moby Dick, on it s way gos problem. up to Dounreay to collect some samples for Trumpets & Raspbe rries 12-13 radiat ion monitoring. As usual t here is a spate STEYE MARTIN compares the triumphant Dounreay Inquiry Report with the gloomy of anti-nuclear ploys; t heatre groups wanting truth of some UKAEA leaked documents. discounts on their photocopying and demanding The Sleeping Beasts of Wl ndscole 14-15 attendance at their latest product ion which is JOHN LARGE ond PAUL DRAPER explain going to change the world. the problems which led to the notorious 1957 Wlndscale Fire. We always remind visitors that this wlll Breeder Bombs Out 16-17 be the last nuclear- free Festival in these part s MYCLE SCHNEIDER assesses the future if Torness starts up according to the SSEB's of the fast reactor fuel cycle ond latest amended schedule. In fact we said the the European plutonium requirements. Councils' Chernobyl Response 18 same last year but commissioning was delayed FRED BARKER reports on the growing by a few problems they've been having. number of local authorities setting up T orness, as observed by David Fishlock in the their own radiation monitoring. Financial Times in 1983, is involved in several Edinburgh Heat Plans · 19 RICHARD KERLEY gives on up dote of different races: against Heysham, the PWR what's been happening in Edinburgh on and SCRAM. Heysham has caught up - fuel the CHP front. loading began only two days after Torne ss; the Britain's Acid Exports 20-21 AGR has been scrapped now that Sizewell has MIKE TOWNSLEY takes a cynical look at the CEGB's plans to de-sulphurise been given the go-ahead; and SCRAM have their smoke discharges. won the moral argument time and again. Appropriate Technology 22-25 The Festival, like Christmas, tends to Reviews 26-27 delay things for a month or so, while tourists Little Block Robblt 28 and residents alike, cram a year's worth of culture into a few short weeks. Perhaps this goes a long way to explaining why Reporter PATRICK GREEN is FoE's radiation consultant. Bell has decided to extend his deadline fot J OHN LARGE & PAUL DRAPER work with the submission of comment s on his Part 1 Large & Associa tes, independent nuclear report on the Dounreay Planning Inquiry. consul tonts. The Joint Islands Councils had asked for M YCLE SCHNEIDER works with the Paris office an extension from 25 August to 16 October. of World Informat ion Service on Energy. Mr Bell didn 't go as far as this, but he has FRED BARKER works for Manchester's Nuclear extended it until 22 September. The Islands Free Zone Unit. Councils have also requested that the Inquiry RICHAR D KE RLEY choirs Edinburgh District be re-opened to consider new evidence, but Council's Economic Development Committee. no decision has been made on this yet. Judging by the mess that the European Views expressed in articles appearing in this Collabora tion on the Fast Reactor is in at the Journal ore not necessarily those of SCRAM. present time, there is no hurry to come to a This Journal is produced for the British Anti-Nuclear decision. With the licence for Kalkar still and Safe Energy movements by the Scot tish Campaign uncertain, and the problem of the sodium leak to Resist the Atomic Menace. at Superphenix st ill unresolved, the Fast Editor: Steve Martin Reactor has o serious credibilit y problem, if News Editor: Thom Dlbdln nothing else. If I was Mr Bell, I would take Features Editor: Pete Roche some time off to enjoy t he Festival, and the Appropriate Technology: Mike Townsley rare sunshine as well; and try to find an We welcome contributions of art icles, news, honourable way to recommend refusal of graphics and photographs. planning permission. Deadlines for next Issue: Articles (900 words/poge), 16 Oct. News & Graphics, 23 Oct. ISSN 0140 7340 Bi-mont hly. Cover photo of Dounreay and the culture it threatens by Greenpeace. 2 SSEB carried on regardless. Because of the delays caused by Testing Torness the control rod problem, SCRAM wrote to the SSEB to ascertain their Work on fuel loading into reactor one at Torness nuclear power new commissioning timetable Jn May station ln East Lothian began on 21 July, almost 9 years after this year. The Board. not surprisingly, refused to answer any of our questions contractors started work. It has been a catalogue of corrorate and claimed that they "hove a very lnsensltlvlty and heavyhandedness, from the demolltlon o Half close liaison with people and Moon Cottage on 14 November 1978, up to the day fuel loading organisations In East Lothian• and "do began. PETE ROCHE reports on recent developments. not accept • • • that there is great concern locally about Torness ." At the end of June 1986, the South of station does not require a discharge The leader of Edinburgh District Scotland Electricity Board (SSEB) certificate before fuel loading begins. Council wrote on 1 July in another odvlsed Lothian Regional Council that Comments on the application for attempt to find out when the Board they Intended to complete fuel loading Heyshom's certificates need to be expected to be granted o licence for of T orness Reactor 1, and carry out a lodged by 4 September. Authorisation flnol fuel loading of reactor one. The fuelled engineering run during October could be granted by late October. Board's reply was dated 22 July - the 1986. They actually began fuel loading The dote the Torness certificates day after fuel loading began. They did, on 21 July this year; the plant Is were Issued, the day before the however, make a 'courtesy' telephone therefore almost a year behind General Election, caused some call to the Chief Executive of the schedule. (Hunterston B holds the AGR speculation that the SSEB were Council on 21 July to let him know record for the closest adherence to attempting to get the commissioning that fuelling hod begun. schedule - and that was four years process as far along the rood to The SSEB claimed they sent a late). completion as possible before the telex to the press on the morning of The main reason for the delay was Election. Observers questioned the fuel loading. However, SCRAM was the discovery lost October of a design need for the certificates to be issued told by the Scotsman, Glasgow Herald weakness in the control rods. During so long before the station was ready and the BBC that they had heard tests, Involving pumping high pressure to make any discharges. The Heyshom nothing from the Board. In their report COi through the channels, the rods timetable emphasises this cvrlous the next day the Scotsman wrote: began to spin and bang about Inside situation. "news that loading of fuel hod begun their steel guide tubes. The Board The actual level of discharge was mode public, not by the Board, announced In May that modifications allowed is also a focus of criticism. but by the anti-nuclear group SCRAM." to rectify the fault hod been The normal practice Is for the plant The SSEB denied they hod tried to completed, at a cost of £3.5m. The operator to discharge far less than keep the development quiet. some fault was also discovered at allowed In the certificate. However, The SSEB hove refused to make Heysham 2, T orness' sister plant being the Environment Committee on concessions on the emergency planning built by the Central Electricity Radioactive Waste attacked present issue. Despite repeated protests from Generating Board near Lancaster. llmlts because they can "too easily Lothian Regional Council, the The modification programme was accommodate unusual events or evacuation zone around T orness is only co-ordinated by the Notional Nuclear accidents." Eire Is pressing for zero 3km and would Involve moving only Corporation (NNC), a consortium of discharge from plants, and the EEC i$ 400 people. The fact that the town of nuclear industry organisations in which urging member countries to agree. Gomel, 125 mlles from Chernobyl, the Government has the largest stoke. Although the EEC has no power to with Its 300,000 Inhabitants had to be They discovered, using a half scale enforce such a policy, lt Is apparent evacuated, has not been lost on the model of the guide tube, that the that the UK government Is involved caunclllors or the Lothian and Borders problem occurred because of the way In hard bargaining with the electricity Fire Board. In which the gas entered the channel, boards to reduce the discharge Lothian Region was the prime and removal of certain castellated nuts dutharisations. mover, along with Shetland Islands cured it. Torness become an im?ortont Council, ln getting nuclear power onto The addition of the nuts was a election Issue, with Labour candidates the agenda of the Nuclear Free Zones change from the Hlnkley/Hunterston promising to mothball t he plant If lt movement (because of Torness plant design to protect the gas inlets was not already on line on the return In Lothian's case, and Dounreay in from cross~flow effects.