The Legacy of Nuclear Power

Andrew Blowers

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9780415870009
• eBook ISBN: 9781317671206
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Energy Industry
• Index: Business

Nuclear energy leaves behind an infinitely dangerous legacy of radioactive wastes in places that are remote and polluted landscapes of risk. Four of these places - Hanford (USA) where the plutonium for the first atomic bombs was made, Sellafield, where the UK's nuclear legacy is concentrated and controversial, La Hague the heart of the French nuclear industry, and Gorleben, the focal point of nuclear resistance in Germany - provide the narratives for this unique account of the legacy of nuclear power.

The Legacy of Nuclear Power takes a historical and geographical perspective going back to the origins of these places and the ever changing relationship between local communities and the nuclear industry. The case studies are based on a variety of academic and policy sources and on conversations with a vast array of people over many years. Each story is mediated through an original theoretical framework focused on the concept of 'peripheral communities' developing through changing discourses of nuclear energy. This interdisciplinary book brings together social, political and ethical themes to produce a work that tells not just a story but also provides profound insights into how the nuclear legacy should be managed in the future.

The book is designed to be enjoyed by academics, policy-makers and professionals interested in energy, environmental planning and politics and by a wider group of stakeholders and the public concerned about our nuclear legacy.

1
Nuclear Oases

The persistence of the periphery

The enduring geography of nuclear waste

The legacy of nuclear power is found in the sites around the world where uranium has been mined, where nuclear power has been produced, where nuclear weapons have been manufactured and tested and where reprocessing of nuclear fuel for plutonium has taken place. The legacy consists in the buildings that once housed reactors, in the pools and storage areas that hold radioactive wastes and in the areas of contaminated land and polluted waters caused by emissions and discharges, leakages and precipitation. The legacy of radioactive waste in its various forms is inevitable and long-lasting arising from routine operations but also from accidents, some of them releasing large quantities of radioactivity over wide areas, in the worst cases causing the evacuation of surrounding populations and perpetual restrictions on human habitation. While Fukushima and Chernobyl are the most notorious nuclear accidents, there have been many others, often unpublicised and sometimes unrevealed until long after they occurred. But, around every nuclear installation there is restricted access for safety and security reasons, and beyond, often an area where various restrictions and emergency planning procedures are in place. The calculation of risk to human health and the environment from exposure to radioactivity is a contested area; all that can really be said is that a risk, real and perceived, exists and persists over time though the nature and extent of the risk is a matter of seemingly irreconcilable debate. The communities living in the shadow of nuclear facilities are, thereby, communities living with risk and it is these communities, the problems that they face and the implications for how we manage the nuclear legacy which are the subject of this book.

The idea that nuclear power station sites or the nuclear reprocessing complexes scattered around the world were destined to survive in perpetuity as nuclear waste dumps was far from the thoughts of those planning, promoting and developing the nuclear economy. Yet, the production of electricity or plutonium will seem only a short phase in the lifetime of nuclear facilities and communities, assuming, of course, that the catastrophic potential of nuclear fission does not, in the meantime, bring about its own demise and that of everything else. For there always looms the possibility, small but there all the same, of a major nuclear accident on the scale of Chernobyl or Fukushima or, more terrible still, the prospect of a nuclear war that escalates out of control (Perrow, 1999; Schlosser, 2013). In the apocalyptic words of the late Ulrich Beck there is always the prospect of instant annihilation: ‘But the effect only exists when it occurs, and when it occurs, it no longer exists, because nothing exists any more’ (1992, p.38). Nuclear risk is a paradox in time – it is, at once, both everlasting and instantaneous.

For the present and extending into the future, all those places with nuclear facilities possess a long-term and default function which is to become sites for the storage of radioactive wastes. Although almost every nuclear country has, in principle, plans for the eventual burial of the most radioactive of these wastes, only a handful have made any progress towards that end and nowhere in the world is there yet an operating and authorised site for the deep geological disposal of the highest level radioactive wastes.¹ Finding a site that will safely contain the wastes for hundreds of thousands of years and that is also acceptable to society has proved an intractable problem in many countries. Even if acceptable sites are found it will be many decades before wastes can be satisfactorily buried. Focusing attention on geological disposal as the Holy Grail suggests that a permanent solution has already been found to the problem of the nuclear industry’s most dangerous legacy. It clears a hurdle that otherwise might impede the industry’s further progress and expansion. It leaps ahead to a promised land that may never exist, diverting attention from the problem of the existing legacy, the accumulation of wastes in varying conditions of safety and security that creates landscapes of risk. Whatever the ultimate solution, it is the management of these wastes here and now and extending into the far future that is both the problem and the solution.

In many countries, nuclear power stations are the interim storage sites for the legacy of nuclear wastes pending the eventual arrival of a deep geological repository at some distant time. In a few countries, the UK, France, Russia and the US among them, radioactive wastes have also accumulated at the sites of large reprocessing facilities originally developed for the production of plutonium for nuclear weapons. Reprocessing is the chemical separation of fissionable plutonium from irradiated (or spent) fuel. Reprocessing requires a range of nuclear facilities (reactors, reprocessing plants and waste management facilities) to process and store the complex waste products including highly active liquid wastes, that result. Reprocessing has also been developed for civil purposes to recycle and reuse plutonium in the manufacture of mixed oxide fuel for use in thermal reactors. There is also the prospect, optimistically presented by the nuclear industry, that plutonium may find a future use in fast breeder reactors which have for decades been at an experimental stage of development. However, as the need for plutonium for military purposes has receded with the ending of the Cold War, as markets for reused nuclear fuel have failed to develop and as fast breeder programmes have faltered, so reprocessing has diminished and there has been a palpable shift from production of plutonium to cleaning up and safely managing the dangerous legacy of wastes that has been left. It is, therefore, necessary to place plutonium and other high level waste materials in long-term secure storage until deep geological disposal becomes available. Until then these materials must be kept in high security stores to protect them from diversion and thereby prevent the possibilities of nuclear proliferation. This, then, is the background for my study.

The overarching theme for this book is the relationship between nuclear communities and radioactive waste. In it I intend to illuminate and reflect on three broad themes. First, is the empirical feature of nuclear’s legacy: its tendency to be confined to established locations and the implications both for the nuclear industry and the local community. Second, is a conceptual characteristic: the tendency for these locations to manifest what I shall call ‘peripheral’ characteristics, places that are at the margins geographically and economically, and politically and socially dependent in certain aspects. And third, a more theoretical theme, is a concern with the power relations between industry and community in terms of the discourses they manifest and the resources they are able to deploy. These three themes – empirical, conceptual and theoretical – help to define, understand and explain the relationship between community and legacy and suggest some implications for radioactive waste management strategy which I shall consider in the final chapter.

Communities on a continuum

As to the first theme, the location of the nuclear legacy, there are two abiding characteristics: its persistence both in place and time. The geography of the industry, at least throughout the Western countries with which I am concerned in this book, was established long ago and, with few exceptions, the pattern has remained frozen ever since. Moreover, nuclear activities have extraordinary durability over time, with radioactivity present as nuclear waste extending into the far future, with the possibility of further perpetuation through the construction of new power stations and radioactive waste facilities. The anchoring of the nuclear industry in its existing locations has bequeathed a set of ‘nuclear oases’, those places where nuclear facilities in some form already exist and therefore where nuclear’s legacy will prevail (Blowers et al., 1991; Blowers, 1999). The most extensive nuclear oases with the biggest communities are the major reprocessing sites, including the military nuclear reservations in the United States and Russia (Bradley, 1998; Brown, 2013) and the civil and military complexes in the UK and France. Here, substantial nuclear communities have grown up to support the myriad of complex activities that take place there. These places I have called ‘nuclear communities’ since their work and lives are focused on managing and cleaning up the legacy of nuclear power and reprocessing. I have chosen four such communities in four different countries as the context for my analysis of the legacy of nuclear power.

Over many years I have visited over 40 nuclear sites in twelve countries. I have toured nuclear power stations, examined nuclear waste facilities and been deep underground to experience research laboratories for geological disposal (in Sweden, France, Germany and Switzerland) and have seen the first (and, so far, the only) operational underground repository in New Mexico, United States. Of all the places I have been there were four to which I became repeatedly drawn and which I decided to study. Each is a major site for managing the nuclear legacy in its country. It is possible to place each site on a continuum based on how long they have been established and how stable the relationship is between nuclear communities and the nuclear industry they support and on which they depend. At the same time they are places at different stages on a continuum of interdependent and overlapping economic, social and political characteristics which together constitute each local community in relation to the nuclear legacy it is hosting. Each of the communities I have chosen is featured in the chapters that follow.

Hanford in Washington state, USA, was established during the Second World War as the site for the production of plutonium which was first used in the atom bomb that destroyed Nagasaki in 1945 (Gerber, 1997; Hevly and Findlay, 1998; Brown, 2013). During the four decades after the War, Hanford expanded its role as the plutonium production site for the arms race and acquired a range of other nuclear activities. Over this period large volumes of highly active nuclear wastes accumulated along with other wastes, leaving a legacy that has made the site one of the most contaminated areas on earth. Since the end of the Cold War, Hanford’s production function has wound down and the site is now dedicated fundamentally to decommissioning its reactors and reprocessing plants, managing its wastes and cleaning up the site, a process that will take decades to come. The Hanford site sprawls over 586 square miles in the semi-desert on a bend in the Columbia River. To the south of it, it has developed a substantial urbanised area comprising the Tri-Cities. This, or part of it at least, is an established nuclear community occupying a relatively stable position at one end of the continuum. The nuclear industry may have lost some of its dominance but remains the single most important determinant of the community’s identity and culture. And, though separate and still relatively secretive, the huge military Hanford reservation still casts its awesome physical presence over this remote area of America’s North West.

Sellafield in Cumbria in the northwest of England lies a little further along my continuum. Established just after the Second World War, like Hanford it was originally set up as a military site for the manufacture of plutonium for the UK’s independent nuclear deterrent. Over the years it developed a whole range of non-military nuclear functions including the production of electricity, development of experimental fast reactors and manufacture of mixed oxide fuels. By contrast with Hanford, Sellafield is a very compact site covering less than two square miles and it combines both military and civil functions though, with the Windcale reactors shut down, the military presence is nowadays mainly legacy functions of storage and waste management. Sellafield is at an earlier transitional stage than Hanford in the shift from production to clean-up. Reprocessing, once the lifeblood of the plant dealing with both UK and foreign spent fuel, now mainly a method of waste management rather than plutonium production, is being phased out for technical and commercial reasons. Like Hanford, Sellafield is becoming more and more dedicated to waste management and clean-up of what is commonly regarded as the most dangerous site in Western Europe. The neighbouring area of West Cumbria comprises small towns and villages on the edge of England’s celebrated Lake District. Although reprocessing is dying, other possibilities of breathing new life into Sellafield’s nuclear complex are tantalising if unlikely such as a new mixed oxide fuel plant or the development of new reactors adjacent to the site. The prospect of the UK’s deep geological repository being constructed here, near where most of the country’s wastes are located, has twice been rejected but could yet be revived. Unlike Hanford, Sellafield has not achieved a fully settled relationship between industry and community. So, Sellafield still has the appurtenances of a nuclear mirage while the reality is a nuclear oasis in transition to a future of cleaning up the nation’s nuclear legacy.

In the case of France, I have chosen two sites for my study which, taken together, are the main places for the management of the country’s nuclear legacy. La Hague at the tip of the Cotentin peninsula in Normandy is the location of France’s civil nuclear reprocessing industry (reprocessing for military purposes was located at the country’s first reprocessing plant at Marcoule in the south of the country). France has a high dependency on nuclear electricity and total production is second only to that in the United States. Moreover, the French industry has, from the outset, adopted the reprocessing cycle so that practically all the spent fuel from reactors across the country is transferred to La Hague, to be reprocessed for plutonium with the resulting high level waste streams converted into vitrified blocks for storage and ultimately disposal. La Hague was first developed during the 1970s and expanded eventually to incorporate two large reprocessing works to deal with both French and overseas spent fuel from foreign customers. The return of wastes to these customers, though contractually necessary, has caused conflict with anti-nuclear groups in Japan and, as we shall see, has been a major source of conflict over nuclear power in Germany. The ultimate destination for French high level waste is very likely to be Bure, in eastern France, the second site of my study. Its present status is as the site for an underground research laboratory which has been excavated. Although not finally confirmed Bure is, to all intents and purposes, the putative site of the national nuclear repository, the final link in the chain from power stations through La Hague to Bure. La Hague, unlike Hanford and to a lesser extent Sellafield, is still a production site but it has a relatively settled relationship with the rural and urban communities that populate this remote corner of France. As yet, there is very little nuclear related development at Bure, a nuclear oasis in prospect though not yet in being. The site is in a thinly populated rural area where the nuclear industry gained a foothold almost by stealth and with very little conflict.

By contrast, the fourth of my case studies, Gorleben in Germany, has been riven with conflict right from its beginnings in the late 1970s. Originally, the site in Lower Saxony near the Elbe River on the border with East Germany was geographically peripheral although since reunification it is more centrally located within the country. Nevertheless, it still has a sense of remoteness and a distinct cultural identity. Gorleben was initially proclaimed as the site for an Integrierte Entsorgungskonzept (Integrated Waste Management Concept), an all-singing, all-dancing nuclear complex including an interim radioactive waste store and reprocessing facility associated with a prospective deep disposal repository buried in a salt dome beneath. From the start the project proved deeply controversial and, in the wake of the Three Mile Island disaster in 1979, the plans for a reprocessing plant were dropped. Indeed, it proved politically impossible to find an acceptable site for reprocessing anywhere else, hence Germany came to rely on La Hague and Sellafield with the vitrified wastes arising destined to be returned to the Gorleben interim fuel store. But, the salt dome and the interim store became the focus of anti-nuclear protest. The Gorleben protests had a strong, persistent and implacable local basis but drew in support from across the country in cross-cutting coalitions capable of mounting mass protests. Although the salt dome was excavated as a research facility, it remained controversial and, in the post-Fukushima anti-nuclear triumph that brought about the phase-out of nuclear energy, the salt dome was closed. For many years there were mass protests against shipments of nuclear waste into the pilot conditioning plant and interim store which was also forced to close before it was full leaving wastes to be stored on sites at power stations around the country. Gorleben with its quiet rural hinterland of farming, waterland and forests has just the remnants of a nuclear industry. But, it was the very deep and relentless conflict over the site that brought about the eventual demise of not only Gorleben’s nuclear industry but that of Germany’s also. Thus, Gorleben stands at the far end of the continuum as the emblematic community where resistance proved sufficiently powerful to prevent nuclear development.

Each of the four communities reflects the first of the issues with which this book is concerned; the tendency of the legacy of nuclear power to be confined to its already established locations and the consequences this has both for the nuclear communities and for the management of nuclear wastes. I come now to my second theme, the tendency for these locations to express peripheral characteristics. They are places that can be described as ‘peripheral’ in several senses. In the next section I shall try to show how the concept of the periphery helps us to explore the nature of nuclear communities and to explain the processes and relationships which sustain their geographical location and persistence over time.

The nature of peripheral communities

The idea of peripheral communities was first put forward in a paper which I wrote with a colleague social scientist, Pieter Leroy, primarily to consider, as we put it; ‘the sociological nature and political implications of the relationship between environmental quality and social inequality’ (Blowers and Leroy, 1994, p.198). It was intended to apply to those places in which hazardous activities such as industrial chemicals, power stations, infrastructural works or waste facilities were located. Such activities constitute what have come to be called ‘locally unwanted land uses’ (LULUs) (Popper, 1985) that must be located somewhere but which present environmental and health risks to local populations in existing or proposed locations. Nuclear facilities, including power stations but especially those activities concerned with decommissioning, clean-up and waste management, are, perhaps, the classic case of such LULUs. The central proposition posed in our paper was that LULUs tend typically to be located in already backward areas and that, therefore, their location reproduces and reinforces processes of ‘peripheralisation’. I shall come to the latter idea in a moment. First, I need to outline the key characteristics of peripheral communities. In sum, they can be described as geographically remote, economically marginal, politically powerless and socially homogeneous. And they are also, whether in practice or in prospect, places of environmental hazard or risk. Those places considered in this book manifest all these qualities to greater or lesser ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• CONTENTS
• List of illustrations
• Preface
• 1 Nuclear oases – the persistence of the periphery
• 2 Hanford, USA – an enduring legacy
• 3 Sellafield, UK – a paradox of power
• 4 La Hague and Bure, France – the traditional and the modern
• 5 Gorleben, Germany – the power of resistance
• 6 Conclusion
• Index