Sellafield (Hansard, 17 July 2003)

§ Mr. Meacher
To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry when she expects the remediation of Sellafield building B30 to commence. [124834]

§ Mr. Timms
[holding answer 11 July 2003]: BNFL has advised me that remediation within building B30 at Sellafield has been in progress since the pond ceased operations early in the last decade. Work to prepare for the acceleration of these operations is in progress. The Health and Safety Executive has given BNFL the requirement to retrieve and treat 90 per cent. of the sludge in B30 by 2010.

§ Mr. Meacher
To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what volume of dried radioactive waste sludge she expects to be removed from building B30 at Sellafield in the post-operation clean-out process. [124835]

§ Mr. Timms
[holding answer 11 July 2003]: BNFL has advised me that, because the amount of de-watering which will be needed to facilitate removal and treatment of these sludges has not yet been established, this volume cannot yet be accurately determined. However, BNFL currently expects it to amount to several hundred cubic metres.

§ Mr. Meacher
To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry if she will make a statement on the safety of the Magnox storage and decommissioning B30 facility at Sellafield. [124886]

§ Mr. Timms
[holding answer 10 July 2003]: The B30 pond contains many tonnes of Magnox fuel and sludge from corrosion of the Magnox fuel cladding and the fuel. These must be removed and converted into forms suitable for long-term passively safe storage and eventual disposal, while minimising radiation doses to the work force and risk to the public. This decommissioning poses significant technical challenges.
I have been informed that as a result of the increased concern of the Health and Safety Executive's Nuclear Installations Inspectorate (NII) over the state of the plant and lack of progress in decommissioning, it served an Improvement Notice in July 2001 requiring BNFL to produce a decommissioning plan, programme and a project specification. NII further required BNFL to prepare a risk assessment of the failure of B30 structure and equipment. Following assessment of this report by NII, BNFL has now committed to a full structural analysis of the whole B30 facility, to be completed by June 2004. Additionally, Nil requires BNFL to retrieve and treat 90 per cent. of the sludge from B30 by 2010. NH will be continually monitoring the programme and the technical work.
Copies of a report prepared by BNFL on the B30 facility were recently placed in the Libraries of the House.

§ Llew Smith
To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what facility attachments and safeguards provisions apply to the B30 spent fuel and waste store at Sellafield; when Euratom safeguards inspectors last516W visited the B30 plant; what discussions her Department has had with the (a) Euratom Safeguards Directorate and (b) European Commission authorities on B30; and if she will make a statement on the application of safeguards at B30. [126522]

§ Mr. Timms
The B30 store at Sellafield is subject to regular Euratom safeguards inspections, the last one being in March of this year. Particular Safeguards Provisions (PSP) have been prepared by the European Commission for this part of the Sellafield facility but have yet to enter into force. A facility attachment would only be negotiated in the event the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) decided to designate B30 for inspection under the UK's safeguards agreement with the IAEA and Euratom.
The Department maintains close contact with both the European Commission's safeguards authorities and also BNFL across the range of issues that relate to safeguards arrangements at Sellafield. Definitive statements on such Euratom safeguards implementation as a whole are contained in recent reports on Euratom Safeguards operations as published by the European Commission. The Executive Summary to the most recent of these (on activities during 2001, published in October 2002) notes that 'verification activities conducted by Commission inspection staff led to the conclusion that, apart from some discrepancies between evaluations carried out by operators and Commission inspectors, which are in the process of being solved, no diversion of nuclear material from its intended use was established'. This follows a similar conclusion, that the Commission 'did not find any indication that nuclear material had been diverted from its intended peaceful use' in the corresponding report for 1999–2000.