A fresh crisis has hit British Nuclear Fuels over potentially disastrous
defects in the fuel it supplies to Britain's nuclear power stations.
The industry's safety regulator, the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate,
has impounded four batches of uranium fuel at BNFL's Springfields
manufacturing site, near Preston, because it would be unsafe to use in
nuclear reactors.
The fuel assemblies were due for dispatch to two reactors run by
privatised
nuclear generator British Energy, but were seized by NII inspectors last
Thursday because weldings in the assemblies were cracked.
If they had been loaded into a power station's core, radioactive material
would have leaked from the containers into the reactor's cooling system,
causing serious safety problems which would shut down the plant if
detected.
NII sources said that, although they did not believe there were cracked
assemblies currently loaded in reactors, it could not rule out the
possibility.
The latest setback comes after the BNFL chief executive, John Taylor, was
dismissed following last month's damning NII reports into the safety
management failures and the falsification of quality control documents at
its Sellafield reprocessing plant in Cumbria.
The NII will now start a fresh investigation of fuel production at
Springfields.
It will add further embar rassment to the company and the Government which
has had to apologise to Japanese customers of BNFL over the falsification
scandal. Ministers were incensed by the affair, and made clear they wanted
Taylor out.
One NII source said: 'This is yet more terrible news for BNFL. They don't
seem to do anything right.'
The latest revelations follow a statement on February 18 by BNFL which
said
current systems and processes at Springfields 'meet customer
requirements'.
An NII spokesman confirmed that it had impounded the fuel assemblies, and
was keeping them in a storage facility at Springfields. 'We have taken
some
fuel into our possession. There may be a quality control problem in terms
of welds in stainless steel cladding in fuel containers into which fuel
rods are inserted.'
He said inspectors had gone to Springfields after BNFL and British Energy
alerted them to problems.
BNFL has halted supply of fuel to seven modern Advanced Gas Cooled
Reactors
owned by British Energy until the NII has fully investigated the problem.
Asked how long this would be, an NII spokesman said: 'How long is a
nuclear
fuel rod?'
Nuclear industry expert Frank Barnaby said: 'This is very alarming. It
poses a very serious question over quality control at BNFL and about the
management systems to guarantee it. It suggests they are trying to cut
down
on costs and as a result cutting down on checks and safety. The fact that
they reported it to the NII makes it even more odd. Normally they would
set
the fuel aside and repair it themselves.'
Industry experts say there have been concerns about fuel produced at
Springfields for some time, although this is the first batch to have been
identified with faulty welds.
A Greenpeace spokesman said: 'We have been worried about Springfields for
some time. The bottom line is that we don't believe BNFL can produce high
quality nuclear fuel. '
The latest problems could wreck government plans to partly privatise BNFL
by selling a 49 per cent stake. On hearing the news, one City investment
banker, who knows the company well, said: 'I just don't believe this. No
one in their right mind is going to touch them now.'
In last month's reports, NII chief executive Laurence Williams slammed the
company for falsifying quality control data for fuel shipments to Japanese
power utilities.
Williams said there was no excuse for the falsification, which had gone on
for years in the full knowledge of management, which had done nothing to
stop it. He added that plants may have to close unless major improvements
were made.
