No more nuclear trains through London?

By David Polden in Kick Nuclear August 2021

(…)[I]t was announced in June that both of Dungeness B’s two “advanced gas-cooled reactors”, out of operation since September 2018, were “beyond repair” and therefore would not re-open.

This means that the end of transport of highly radioactive “spent” fuel rods removed from power stations and sent by rail through London is in sight.  It takes around five years for a power station to be defuelled, that is for all the spent fuel rods to be removed and sent up to Sellafield by train through London to be stored or reprocessed.  So this last transport of spent nuclear fuel through London should cease around 2023.

At one time there were nuclear trains, usually weekly, carrying such spent fuel rods from four different places, running through London.  They ran from Dungeness, Bradwell, Sizewell and from the Continent, primarily from Germany, but also from Switzerland and Belgium. 

The trains carrying European waste were the first to stop running.  After the train ferry from Dunkirk to Dover stopped in 1980, the Channel Tunnel refused to allow nuclear trains to use it.  Continental spent fuel rods have since been sent by sea directly to Barrow for onward transport by train to Sellafield.  The editor has been unable to find out whether this transport is still running, especially given that Germany is in the process of closing down all its nuclear power stations by the end of 2022.

The second nuclear train to cease running through London was the one coming from Bradwell power station in Essex which closed down in 2002 and was decommissioned by 2005.  The third was the one from Sizewell A in Suffolk, which shut down in 2006, but was not fully defuelled till 2014.  This meant that nuclear trains ceased running, at least regularly, along the North London line then.

It is not certain that nuclear waste trains still don’t occasionally run through London, or will not resume regularly some time in the future.

Sizewell B pressurized-water reactor (pwr), which started operating in 1997 is planned to go on operating until 2055.  However it has always stored its spent fuel on-site, first in ponds and when existing ponds became full, in dry storage in casks.  I assumed this meant that none of the spent fuel from Sizewell B was sent to Sellafield.  However in research for this article, I read somewhere that “occasionally” nuclear trains travel from Sizewell B to Sellafield, though I now can’t find the reference for this.

It is also planned that at some indefinite point in the future a deep depository for all high-level nuclear waste in the UK will be built, so if such a plan is every carried out all such waste at Sellafield will be presumably be transported to it by train.

There are plans for two new pwr nuclear reactors each at Bradwell B and Sizewell C.  However such plans have been in existence since at least 2010 and building has yet to start at either site, and there are reasons to doubt that the currently planned two reactors at Bradwell B will ever be built (see Kick Nuclear, August 2021)

It is planned that if built, the spent nuclear fuel rods from each station will be stored on site for at least 100 years it's said to "cool down", before being transferred It's not quite clear whether this means the temperature or the level of radioactivity. If it's the temperature it surely would only take a few years at most. And since many of the radioactive elements the "spent" rods contain have half-lives of many thousands of years, the rods will still be highly-radioactive after 100 years. I suspect keeping the rods on-site for 100 years is a matter of kicking the problem of final disposal into the long grass, since no local authority has been found willing to host such a deep storage facility.

'Japanese Against Nuclear' protest

Japanese Against Nuclear-UK, Kick Nuclear and CND members held protests at the Japanese Embassy in London and the Tokyo Electric Power Company's London Office on 30 July, to condemn the Japanese government's announcement that it will discharge Fukushima contaminated water into the Pacific.

Government-controlled TEPCO runs the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, the site of what is widely regarded as the worst ever nuclear disaster in 2011, after an earthquake resulted in permanent damage to the plant’s reactors. Radioactive materials leaked into the air, soil, and sea, and around 156,000 people were displaced from a 30-kilometre exclusion zone around the power plant.

JAN organiser and London CND committee member, Shigeo Kobayashi said the decision 'ignores human rights and international maritime law’. The following statement was read out, in solidarity with the anti-nuclear movement in Japan and across the world:

‘The Japanese government has once again failed the people of Fukushima. The government has taken the wholly unjustified decision to deliberately contaminate the Pacific Ocean with radioactive wastes. It has discounted the radiation risks and turned its back on the clear evidence that sufficient storage capacity is available on the nuclear site as well as in surrounding districts. Rather than using the best available technology to minimize radiation hazards by storing and processing the water over the long term, they have opted for the cheapest option dumping the water into the Pacific Ocean.

‘Additionally, the nationwide federation of Japan Fisheries Cooperatives has continued to express its complete opposition to ocean discharge.

‘United Nations human rights special rapporteurs warned the Japanese government in June 2020 and again in March 2121 that discharging the water into the environment breaches the rights of Japanese citizens and its neighbours including Korea. They called on the Japanese government to delay any decision on discharging the contaminated water into the sea until the crisis of COVID-19 is over and appropriate international consultations are held.

‘Though the decision has been announced, it will take around two years before these discharges commence at the Fukushima Daiichi plant.

‘Jennifer Morgan, Executive Director at Greenpeace International, said: “In the 21st century, when the planet and in particular the world's oceans are facing so many challenges and threats, it is an outrage that the Japanese government and TEPCO think they can justify the deliberate dumping of nuclear waste into the Pacific Ocean. The decision is a violation of Japan's legal obligations under the United Nations Convention on the law of the Sea, (UNCLOS), and will be strongly resisted over the coming months”.’

The end of nuclear power in the UK? Talk by Dr Ian Fairlie

Dr Ian Fairlie, independent consultant on radioactivity in the environment and former head of the Secretariat of the UK Government’s CERRIE Committee on internal radiation risks, talks to a meeting of Haringey CND about the end of nuclear power in the UK. Watch the full video below!

Greenham Common: A Postscript

London CND member Jill Truman returned to Greenham Common in February 2019 for a photo exhibition highlighting life in the women's peace camp, where she met up with sisters from her former home town of Bristol. Below she records her recollections for London CND.

THERE ARE NO FENCES, topped with razor wire, at Greenham Common now; no ugly, squat concrete buildings; no runways or silos; no convoys of lorries loaded with missiles.... No soldiers or MOD police or bailiffs or dogs. All those locked gates, named by women after the colours of the rainbow, have gone as well.. It was outside each of those gates, that groups of warmly-wrapped and often dishevelled women set up camps. The sites were makeshift: a few “benders” made of plastic sheeting and a fire to provide warmth and cooking facilities.

Those fires were the soul of each camp, symbols of hope and determination. Again and again, the bailiffs would stamp then out and throw the blackened kettles and pans into their “munchers” - together with the women’s possessions. Time after time after time, the women would re-light the fires and start over. Some stayed for days, some for weeks, months, years. They did put them out and leave the camps until the Cruise missiles had been taken away and the American base, closed.

Now, trees and ponds and thickets extend in every direction. Birds and rabbits and deer have reclaimed their common. Even on a greyish, coldish day in February it is beautiful. The only remnant of the American army base is the Control Tower, looking harmless, even friendly – its door wide open. No longer do you have to smash a window and break in. Nobody arrests you, tries you in Newbury Crown Court or sends you to prison. We just walked in!

THERE WAS SOMETHING VERY FAMILIAR about the people crowded round two large tables in the café: thirty years older, and remarkedly clean and tidy, but recognisably these were Greenham women, some accompanied by friends and relatives. The atmosphere was joyful, affectionate, celebratory. We had come to see an exhibition of black-and-white photographs taken by Wendy Carrig while she lived at Blue Gate in 1985. Whoever could have predicted that it could ever be possible to hold such an event in the forbidden, the hostile, Control Tower? The photos are graphic, recording conditions and situations which might otherwise be forgotten and are backed up by informative written records, including one by Rebecca Johnson, who spent five years there. I was accompanied by a grand-daughter, who had never heard of the Greenham Common peace camps until breakfast-time that morning. Like it or not, we are history now.

There are other interesting exhibitions in this newly-friendly Control Tower. Along a passageway, extends a time-line which narrates events which have happened there over the centuries. Upstairs,

is a room with aeroplanes and bombs and such things (numerous little boys and dads were in there). At the top, is a glazed viewing area, with wonderful views in all directions.

AFTERWARDS, we went outside, lit a fire and sat round it, sharing food and talking. There was a lot of laughter. Easy to forget, for a short time, that nuclear weapons may have left Greenham Common but there are more of them than ever, spread around the world. And plenty of warlike presidents prepared to press the nuclear button.

❍ Jill Truman is a former Greenham woman and playwright. Her work includes Common Women, a play about the peace camp which is still performed from time to time today.

❍ A short report of the photo exhibition and some of the photos that were displayed can be accessed at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-berkshire-46468386