HSE publishes criteria on 'no danger' for
decommissioning (published on 19-Aug-2005)
Moves to decommission Britain's ageing nuclear reactors have come another
step closer as the Health and Safety Executive has published its criteria for
assessing what levels of radiation constitute 'no danger'.
HSE believes the most helpful way to define 'no danger' is to present it in
terms of an assessed numerical risk to human life, rather than to use phrases
such as 'very low risk.'
As a result, the policy statement, 'HSE
Criterion for Delicensing Nuclear Sites', defines the requirement for
establishing 'no danger' when considering a delicensing application to be: "A
demonstration that any residual radioactivity, above background activity, which
remains on the site, which may or may not have arisen from licensable
activities, will lead to a risk of death to an individual using the site for any
reasonably foreseeable purpose, of no greater than one in a million per year."
It is expected that there will be a rapid increase in requests for
delicensing as, last week, Sir Anthony Cleaver, chairman of the Nuclear
Decommissioning Authority said he would like to see the ageing Magnox reactors
decommissioned over the next 25 years, not 125 as previously planned, admitting
that the cost of doing so is likely to increase by around £8 billion to £56
billion (see related
story).
This will be paid for by the taxpayer,
causing consternation among conservationists and green groups who see nuclear as
little more than an expensive liability.
Reports earlier this week
suggest that the contract for decommissioning will go to an American firm. The
Observer states that British Nuclear Group, the company that currently
dismantles old atomic sites in the UK, is set to sign a deal with US engineering
firm Jacobs to carry out the decommissioning.
This could even be a
pre-cursor to the eventual takeover of BNG by a US firm, the report suggests.
David Hopkins
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Source: edie newsroom
