The Guardian
Paul Brown
Environment Correspondent
Monday February 21, 2000

One of the oldest nuclear plants in the country may have to shut permanently because it was not built properly in the first place and is unsafe.

The 35-year-old Hinkley Point A magnox station in Somerset has been shut down for months after checks through old papers found that some of the parts of the steel pressure vessel were not tested properly when the station was first built.

British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL), which now runs the station, is already under fire from the nuclear installations inspectorate at Sellafield for its lack of safety culture. It is having to submit a new safety case for Hinkley. The company must try and convince the government safety watchdog that Hinkley Point can be reopened.

BNFL accepts that the problem meant that the station had to be shut down because it "does not meet the required safety margins". It believes it can "work up a safety case" to allow the two reactors to start up again, probably in April.

Local people are so alarmed at the prospect of the station being allowed to generate power again that they have begun a campaign called simply Stop Hinkley. Among its sponsors are Paddy Ashdown, David Bellamy, Raymond Briggs and Julie Christie.

Jim Duffy, the Stop Hinkley coordinator, said: "This station was opened in 1965, designed to run for 20 to 25 years, and that means to close at least 10 years ago. It was built without secondary containment, now standard on modern reactors, which means if there is a release of fission materials they go straight into the atmosphere and are not kept in the plant."

Apart from the original failure to test steel materials for the pressure vessel correctly, there were other problems with the reactor. It was the same age as the Trawsfynydd station in mid Wales, shut nine years ago because the steel became brittle because of bombardment by radioactivity. This meant that the pressure vessel gradually got weaker, he said. "We believe that this must have happened at Hinkley. We want it shut."

Mr Duffy has a list of other faults, which he says make Hinkley more of a liability than an asset. The station has suffered problems of corrosion in the past.

The environment agency is also cross with BNFL, complaining that it has not been properly monitoring the discharges of radioactivity from the site. It has given the company two weeks to sort out the problem.

The difficulty for BNFL is that radiation levels in the reactor are so high it is impossible to get inside to carry out repairs. A spokesman there said they had not yet received representations from BNFL.

Hinkley Point A is one of a dwindling number of Magnox stations. Berkeley in Gloucestershire was the first to close, Hunterston in Scotland was shut on economic grounds, and Trawsfynydd for safety reasons. BNFL announced a month ago that Bradwell in Essex is to close next year.

Return to the top of this page...