BNFL given go-ahead for new nuclear plant

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'Economic benefits' outweigh Mox plant concerns

Leading article: This Government is dangerously infatuated with the nuclear industry

The Government gave the go-ahead yesterday for British Nuclear Fuels to operate a controversial plutonium plant at Sellafield, in Cumbria, which opponents argue could become a terrorist target.

Ministers announced that BNFL was justified in making plutonium mixed oxide (Mox) fuel at Sellafield on the grounds that the plant would earn more than £150m during the course of its lifetime, despite it having cost £473m to build.

Margaret Beckett, the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, said that in addition to the financial returns, the Government had also taken into consideration the wider risks and benefits of allowing the Sellafield Mox Plant to operate.

Mrs Beckett said: "The Secretary of State for Health and I have considered all the information relevant to the justification for the manufacture of Mox fuel... We have concluded that the manufacture of Mox fuel is justified."

BNFL, which finished building the plant in 1996 and had been waiting for permission to operate it, said it was delighted by the decision.

But environmentalists and scientists opposed to the production and shipping of Mox fuel, said it would lead to an unacceptable risk of a terrorist attack as well as environmental pollution. Pete Roche, of Greenpeace, said: "The Sellafield Mox Plant will not only add to Sellafield's environmental contamination, and nuclear waste mountains, but now, after the dreadful events of 11 September, [it] will exacerbate the world-wide problem of nuclear proliferation."

Frank Barnaby, of the Oxford Research Group of scientists, said that it would be relatively easy for terrorists to make crude nuclear devices from stolen Mox fuel by separating out its plutonium content.

"The size of the nuclear explosion from such a crude device is impossible to predict. But even if it were only equivalent to the explosion of a few tens of tons of TNT it would completely devastate the centre of a large city," Dr Barnaby said.

The manufacture of Mox fuel would mean transporting large quantities of plutonium around the world by ship, which could also become terrorist targets, said the opponents of the Government's decision.

Before BNFL can begin Mox production at the new plant it must first obtain consent from the Health and Safety Executive under the terms of its operating licence. This is expected within weeks.

Further reports, page 10; Leading article,

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