§ Mr. CarmichaelTo ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what assessment she has made of the environmental impacts of(a) storage of all AGR nuclear fuel and (b) continuation with current reprocessing contracts with BNFL for each of British Energy's advanced gas-cooled reactors. [91921]
§ Mr. MorleyI have been asked to reply.
No separate assessment has been made of environmental impacts from the storage or reprocessing of spent AGR fuel. AGR fuel is reprocessed at the Thermal Oxide Reprocessing Plant (THORP) at Sellafield. The Environment Agency, on the basis of the National Radiological Protection Board model, estimates that the operation of THORP, when dealing with any type of spent fuel, contributes a maximum of 11 microsieverts a year to the radiation dose received by the Sellafield critical group (those people potentially most exposed to discharges from Sellafield).
This may be compared to the annual UK dose limit for man-made radioactivity of 1000 microsieverts. The estimated critical group doses for Sellafield as a whole at the Agency's proposed new discharge limits, including THORP, are 92 microsieverts for aerial discharges and 190 microsieverts for liquid discharges. Thus, for Sellafield as a whole, the maximum dose to a member of a critical group would be less than 20 per cent. of what would be acceptable under European limits. The THORP contribution is just over 1 per cent. of that limit.
The models used in calculating radiation doses are kept under continuous review, and those to do with inhaled and ingested radiation are currently being considered by the Committee Examining Radiation Risk of Internal Emitters (CERRIE). CERRIE is expected to report by the end of the year.