Nuclear energy and independence

Abstract

The pro-nuclear lobby in the United Kingdom won its battle. The Report on the Windscale Inquiry strongly endorsed the application by British Nuclear Fuels (a company owned by the government) to set up a plant to reprocess spent oxide fuels from thermal reactors; a motion in Parliament to postpone a decision was heavily defeated. The Windscale Inquiry was an attempt to settle in a civilized manner what has been tried in other countries by demonstrations and violence. In this exercise, a High Court Judge was given the task of assessing an enormous mass of highly complex technical and medical material, as well as economic, social, and political arguments. The outcome is bitterly disappointing to the objectors, all of whose arguments were rejected. Although the question of whether Britain should embark on a fast breeder reactor program was specifically excluded from the Inquiry, it clearly had a bearing on it. A decision not to proceed with the reprocessing plant would have made a fast breeder program impossible; indeed, the Report argues that such a decision would involve throwing away large indigenous energy resources, a manifest advocacy of the fast breeder. Other arguments for the decision to go ahead with the reprocessingmore » plant included the need to keep the nuclear industry alive, and the profit which Britain will make in processing fuels from other countries, particularly Japan. The author comments further on present UK policy, taking a dissenting view, and then comments on the paper, Nuclear Energy and the Freedom of the West, by A.D. Sakharov. (MCW)« less