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| 23/4/08 Update. Sellafield MOX Plant (SMP) and THORP Reprocessing. 24/04/2008 18:05:44 Hard on the heels of Government confirmation that SMP had managed to produce just 5.2 tonnes of MOX fuel in five years of operation comes the admission from operators Sellafield Limited that ‘overall production has fallen behind’ as a result of a continuing production failures. |
| 20th Low Level Radiation and Health Conference. Nuclear energy ¡V radiation risks re-visited. 19/03/2008 21:08:37 Conference Venue and Programme EAMONT ROOM, UNIVERSITY of CUMBRIA, AMBLESIDE SITE, JUNE 6-8TH, 2008 |
| 7/3/08 Imminent Plutonium Shipment. 08/03/2008 09:25:18 Sellafield is planning to ship a cargo of dangerous plutonium under armed escort to France in the next few days. The cargo of plutonium, in the form of weapons-useable dioxide powder – a highly prized terrorist material - will be secretly transported from Sellafield in French vehicles to local docks and onto the NDA’s ship Atlantic Osprey bound for Cherbourg. |
| 31/1/08 Further trouble for comatose THORP. 31/01/2008 21:09:52 Still not fully open since the leakage accident in April 2005, hopes to restart THORP soon have been dented by the mechanical failure earlier this week of the elevator system which feeds fuel from the plant’s feed pond into the main plant for reprocessing. |
| 22/1/08 CORE responds to Sellafield Unions document ‘Fighting For A Future For Sellafield” 22/01/2008 15:41:22 CORE’s campaign coordinator Martin Forwood said today: “In terms of sheer ‘pie in the sky’, this document should have been published on April Fools Day. The GMB’s unsubstantiated claims, deliberate half-truths and U-turns about Sellafield and the prospects for reprocessing and new reactors does it little credit and will have impressed few. |
| 7/11/07 NDA plan reinstates UK as Dirty Old Man of Europe. 08/11/2007 10:41:30 In a draft of its next 3-year programme for Sellafield (2008-2011) published today, the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) plans to extend the life of Sellafield’s magnox reprocessing plant from 2012 to ‘2016 or later’. |
| 9/10/07 Fifty Years On 15/10/2007 14:30:06 On the 50th Anniversary of the Windscale Fire, the bravery of those who tackled it and those who died or suffered health damage locally, nationally and in Europe as a result of the radioactivity released will be remembered by local pressure group CORE [Cumbrians Opposed to a Radioactive Environment. |
| 17/7/07 Number of Radioactive Finds on Local Beaches has Doubled in a month. 17/07/2007 14:40:25 Reliable information received by CORE has warned of a significant increase in the number of radioactive objects found on the beaches local to Sellafield in recent weeks and that full details of the dramatic rise is being kept under wraps for fear of creating public alarm. |
| 1/3/07 Further delay for THORP - Re-opening now unlikely until mid 2007 at the earliest. 01/03/2007 14:24:05 British Nuclear Group (BNG) at Sellafield who operate the Thermal Oxide Reprocessing Plant (THORP) under contract to the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) has admitted that there will be yet a further delay to the return to full operation of the plant. |
| 15/2/07 High Court ruling against Government on nuclear power. 15/02/2007 16:02:13 CORE campaigners today welcomed the High Court ruling by Mr Justice Sullivan that the Government had failed to carry out a proper public consultation before re-instating nuclear power in its 2006 Energy Review |
| 12.1.07 THORP, from ten-year ‘wonder’ plant to fifteen-year financial fiasco - who’s fleecing who over its accident costs ? 19/01/2007 15:34:37 Living up to its white elephant reputation, THORP faces yet another crisis in the form of who'll be paying the conservatively estimated £50M costs of the leak accident which will have kept the plant closed for two years. THORP is owned by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) and operated under contract by British Nuclear Group (BNG). |
| 11/12/06 NDA commitment to THORP re-start challenged by CORE. 12/12/2006 16:35:05 In response to the admission by British Nuclear Group (BNG) in its 6th December in-house Sellafield Newsletter that THORP is unlikely to re-start either shearing or chemical separation operations until April 2007, CORE calls on the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) to justify re-opening the plant at all after what will amount to a 2 year accident-enforced shut down. |
| 14/11/06 Risks of secret plutonium fuel shipment from Barrow unmasked 14/11/2006 11:36:29 In a radical departure from accepted safety standards, British Nuclear Group (BNG) at Sellafield plans to transport a shipment of highly contentious plutonium MOX fuel through Barrow docks this weekend using the insecure Anchor Line Basin dock which has limited safety features. |
| 26/10/06 Government decision to entrust NDA with waste disposal ‘plain stupid and probably unworkable’. 26/10/2006 17:14:49 Following the announcement (25th October) by Environment Secretary David Milliband that ‘the responsibility for securing geological disposal of waste should fall to the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority’, local pressure group CORE has branded the decision as plain stupid and probably unworkable. |
| 16/10/06 BNG, Guilty of ‘Serious Faults and Failures’, Fined £500,000 for THORP Accident. 16/10/2006 19:25:48 At Carlisle Crown Court today, British Nuclear Group (BNG) was fined £500,000 for the accident in April last year at Sellafield’s Thermal Oxide Reprocessing Plant (THORP). |
| 9/8/06 British Nuclear Group (BNG) ‘fined’ £2M for THORP leak accident. 09/08/2006 14:03:35 The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) has today published its Operational Review 2005/06 with financial highlights of its accounts which show that a 'fee reduction' of £2M has been levied against its Sellafield BNG contractor for the THORP accident of last year. |
| 4/7/06 Trouble all round 08/07/2006 16:59:51 The Health & Safety Executive's (HSE) Carlisle Crown Court prosecution against British Nuclear Group (BNG) for the THORP leakage accident in April last year, due for hearing on 7th July, has been put back to the end of August at the earliest. |
| 8/6/06 Sellafield in Court 11/06/2006 13:53:48 British Nuclear Group today pleaded guilty at Whitehaven Magistrates Court, West Cumbria, to three charges brought by the Health & Safety Executive (HSE). |
| 3/5/06 British Nuclear Group to be prosecuted over THORP accident. 03/05/2006 19:40:50 The Heath & Safety Executive (HSE) North West has announced today that it will be bringing three criminal charges against British Nuclear Group (BNG). The charges relate to the accident last year at Sellafield’s Thermal Oxide Reprocessing Plant (THORP) where 83,000 litres of highly radioactive liquor leaked from a fractured pipe. |
| 20/4/06 THORP Accident Anniversary – Problems, Power Stations and Prosecutions. 24/04/2006 11:45:03 One year after it was forced to shut down following a major accident (20th April 2005), Sellafield’s Thermal Oxide Reprocessing Plant (THORP) remains idle and facing a series of major hurdles before any restart is possible. An original restart date of December 2005 has been retarded a number of times and now stands at ‘Summer 2006’, though no official decision has yet been made on whether the plant should re-open at all. |
| 2/4/06 Sellafield Transport Comes Off the Rails at Barrow Docks 03/04/2006 10:48:48 In the same week that Greenpeace published a report warning of the dangers of transporting nuclear materials by rail in the UK, a railway wagon carrying an empty nuclear flask, designed to transport vitrified High Level Waste (HLW) from Sellafield, de-railed in the Barrow Docks railway system on Friday morning 31st March. |
| 30/1/06 THORP facing further delay to re-start. 31/01/2006 08:32:28 Sellafield’s THORP reprocessing plant, closed in April last year following a major accident involving the spillage of 18,000 litres of highly radioactive nitric acid, is unlikely to be in a position to re-start until the back end of this year at the earliest |
| 3/10/05 THORP – Extended Shut-Down. 03/10/2005 14:54:26 British Nuclear Group’s (BNG) lame-duck reprocessing plant THORP is likely to remain closed until March next year. |
| 12/8/05 Swedish plans to offload waste fuel on Sellafield for reprocssing. 13/08/2005 10:56:52 In a recent announcement which took other Nordic countries by surprise, Swedish company Studsvik-SVAFO has revealed plans to send a small consignment of research reactor fuel to Sellafield for reprocessing in the ageing B205 Magnox reprocessing plant. |
| 9/6/05 Health study leaves Sellafield on the hook but conveniently clears nuclear power stations. 13/06/2005 11:10:38 The 10th report by the Committee on the Medical Aspects of Radiation in the Environment (COMARE) published today identifies Sellafield once again as a site with more cases of childhood cancer than any other nuclear installation |
| 2/6/05 Security concerns about Sellafield’s Bank Holiday plutonium shipment through Workington. 03/06/2005 15:03:47 Taking advantage of the recent Bank Holiday weekend, Sellafield’s British Nuclear Group (BNG) shipped 4 MOX fuel assemblies (containing around 80kg of plutonium) on 28th May from Sellafield by road to Workington docks |
| 20/5/05 THORP Value – ‘Honesty not Hysteria’ Call by CORE. 20/05/2005 16:19:07 Local group CORE [Cumbrians Opposed to a Radioactive Environment] has called on British Nuclear Group (BNG) to come clean about THORP’s revenues over the next few years. |
| 18/5/05 THORP Close it Down call to NDA 18/05/2005 14:51:42 In a letter to the NDA’s Chief Executive Dr Ian Roxburgh, campaign group CORE has urged the new owners of THORP to cut their losses on THORP and permanently close the plant |
| 5/04/05 Sellafield unions in reprocessing time-warp. 06/04/2005 14:48:34 On the day that British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL) relinquished ownership of the Sellafield site and its operations to the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA), the site’s unions threw a spanner in the NDA clean-up plans by calling for more reprocessing and associated commercial work. |
| 4/1/05 Italy plans to use the UK as a dumping ground for troublesome fuel. 05/01/2005 10:56:25 Campaigners from local group CORE (Cumbrians Opposed to a Radioactive Environment) have hit out at Italian plans to off-load 235 tonnes of irradiated (spent) nuclear fuel onto the UK or France either as a waste product or through reprocessing at Sellafield’s THORP plant. |
| 15/12/04 Government U-Turn on foreign nuclear wastes leaves Cumbria in the ‘worst of all worlds’ 15/12/2004 12:45:29 Campaigners from local anti-nuclear group CORE (Cumbrians Opposed to a Radioactive Environment) have roundly condemned the Government decision to allow a majority of overseas nuclear wastes to be dumped permanently in the UK under a new policy of ‘waste substitution’. |
| 2/9/04 BNFL likely to appear before European Court. 02/09/2004 17:09:53 Sources at the EU Headquarters in Brussels have told CORE that UK officials are now resigned to BNFL being hauled in front of the European Courts of Justice |
| 15/7/04 CORE welcomes findings of major radiation dose uncertainties in leaked Government Report. 15/07/2004 17:10:31 Uncertainties in Seascale internal dose estimates are sufficiently large that it would be unwise to rule out radiation as a contributory factor for the effects seen at Seascale |
| 29/6/04 Chapelcross Nuclear Power Station Closure. 29/06/2004 15:14:36 Following in the footsteps of Sellafield’s Calder Hall last year, the Chapelcross nuclear power station in Scotland is to be shut down immediately |
| 16/5/04 Sellafield Mox Plant fails to deliver – for the second year running. 17/05/2004 10:22:24 BNFL’s much vaunted Sellafield MOX Plant (SMP) has again let down its first customer Nordostschweizerische Kraftwerke (NOK) of Switzerland by failing to deliver a MOX fuel order |
| 9/12/03 Crown Court Conviction for CORE Protestor. 09/12/2003 13:59:15 After a three day trial at Preston Crown Court, CORE’s Campaign Coordinator Martin Forwood was found guilty by the jury of obstructing a railway engine at Barrow Docks earlier in the year. |
| 26/8/03 BNFL to pull plug on THORP reprocessing. 26/08/2003 14:14:12 A plan by BNFL to abandon reprocessing at the Thermal Oxide Reprocessing Plant (THORP) when current contracts have been completed is reported in today’s Guardian newspaper. |
| 14/8/03 Sellafield plutonium shipments in the offing. 14/08/2003 16:44:40 The prospect of plutonium transports between UK and Europe has recently been fuelled by a BNFL statement to the industry’s journal Nuclear Fuel (NF). |
| 29/7/03 Sellafield MOX Plant order book in turmoil. 30/07/2003 10:36:11 Claims made by local group CORE in March - hotly denied at the time by BNFL - that delays in commissioning the Sellafield MOX Plant (SMP) may have lost the company some contracts, have been vindicated by a recent BNFL admission to the industry’s journal Nuclear Fuel. |
| 21/4/03 No UK Ministers or NGO’s at Norwegian Conference. 21/04/2003 17:24:51 UK Ministers will be conspicuous by their absence at this week’s BNFL/Bellona and Lofoten mot Sellafield conference at BNFL’s Summergrove. The lone green NGO voice will be that of Mr Rick Nickerson of the KIMO Secretariat in the Shetlands. |
| 1/4/03 CORE 'Holds Up' Nuclear Transport at Barrow. 16/04/2003 12:42:11 A rail transport of irradiated nuclear fuel was held-up today by a member of CORE (Cumbrians Opposed to a Radioactive Environment) as it left Barrow Docks en route for Sellafield. |
| 28/3/03 Calder Hall – Too Cheap to Meter but Too Expensive to Repair and Run 28/03/2003 17:15:31 Environmentalists and others will heave a sigh of relief after the plug is finally pulled on the last ageing Calder Hall military reactor – Reactor 1 - at Sellafield this month. |
| 24/3/03 Sellafield’s Slap-Happy Security. 24/03/2003 17:30:43 Despite the prospect of its ‘Black Special’ security status being raised to ‘Amber’ because of the war in Iraq, protection of the Sellafield site was shown to be as lax as ever last weekend. |
| 16/10/02 A second-hand ship and second-rate MOX Security for Workington and Europe. 16/10/2002 14:54:34 Still smarting from the negative publicity surrounding the return shipment of rejected plutonium fuel (MOX) from Japan to Sellafield last month, BNFL is planning to ship plutonium fuel to Europe with reduced levels of safety and security for the dangerous cargo. |
| 16/9/02 Barrow Police State As Falsified Plutonium Fuel Returns. 16/09/2002 17:33:04 Three years after leaving Barrow under a storm of protest, and one year after the events of September 11th, BNFL’s embarrassing and controversial cargo of weapons-useable plutonium fuel is due to arrive back in the town’s docks tomorrow morning under renewed protest and after a ten-week voyage that has attracted worldwide condemnation. |
| 30/8/02 Significant Setback for Sellafield MOX plant. 30/08/2002 17:45:45 Hopes of gaining any MOX orders for Sellafield from Japan are fading rapidly says CORE, with the announcement by nuclear power utility TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Company) yesterday that Japan’s MOX (pluthermal) programme has been delayed for the forseeable future. |
| 19/8/02 Environment Agency Misleading over Sellafield’s Discharges 19/08/2002 16:33:31 Publishing its proposals for the regulation of radioactive discharges from Sellafield, the Environment Agency (EA) claims that lowering some discharge limits will reduce potential radiation doses to those living around Sellafield, and to the general public at large. |
| 5/7/02 LMA Plans – A step in the right direction, but inconsistant. 08/07/2002 18:14:11 Describing yesterday’s White Paper details as a step in the right direction, CORE believes that the transfer of BNFL (and UKAEA) liabilities to the new Libilities Management Agency realistically represents little more than ‘moving the Sellafield deckchairs around’ at great public expense. |
| 21/6/02 BNFL Cover-Up Over Power Station Closures. 21/06/2002 15:04:23 In announcing the early closure of their Magnox power stations at Calder Hall and Chapelcross in a press statement today, BNFL has blamed low prices in the wholesale electricity market. |
| 19/6/02 Sellafield Radiation risk confirmed by new health study 19/06/2002 22:28:40 A new report confirms the late Professor Martin Gardner’s hypothesis that Paternal Preconceptional Irradiation (PPI) is a risk factor for leukaemia and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (NHL) in children of male Sellafeld radiation workers. The effect that may not be confined to Seascale and cannot be explained by population mixing. |
| 26/4/02 Empty nuclear waste ships leave for Japan under cloak of security. 26/04/2002 15:45:21 Heightened security around BNFL’s two armed MOX ships and increased dockside activity over the past week has preceded the ships’ departure from BNFL’s Marine Terminal at Ramsden Dock, Barrow-in-Furness this morning. |
| 26/2/02 CORE’s response to the BNFL/ British Energy Feasibility Study Agreement.. 26/02/2002 17:51:38 The agreement signed today in London between British Nuclear Fuels and British Energy to assess the feasibilty of the Westinghouse AP1000 reactor as an eventual replacement for UK’s AGR power stations has been met with scepticism by local anti-nuclear group CORE. |
| 29/1/02 "Singing For Their Supper" 29/01/2002 13:55:58 Following their meeting with a cross-party delegation of Norwegian politicians at Sellafield earlier in the week, CORE campaigners were invited to brief members of the British Irish Inter-Parliamentary Body on Sunday prior to the their visit to Sellafield. |