In what, for good reason, will be seen as a controversial sale, East Kilbride-based British Energy is to be bought for £12.5 billion by EDF, a company whose major shareholder is the French Government. British Energy operates eight British nuclear power stations, two of which are in Scotland – Hunterston in Ayrshire and Torness in East Lothian. It also owns land around each plant where new reactors could be built. The Scottish Government has determined that no new nuclear power stations will be built in Scotland. (Thursday 25th September: EDF has just announced that it will build four new nuclear reactors in England but none in Scotland.)
The acquisition of British Energy by EDF will be announced today (Wednesday 24th September), amid widespread concerns at the loss of control of nuclear energy generation to a foreign state.
EDF had made an earlier offer for British Energy, in July of this year. This was blocked by major shareholders in British Energy.
When the deal is finalised, British power company, Centrica, will spend £3 billion on taking a 25% stake in all new nuclear plants built by EDF and 25% of all power EDF generates. This raises the question of why Centrica did not take power from British Energy when it was nationally owned. The move is widely seen to be an attempt to reassure anxieties over the loss of control of such a major utility to another state.
British Energy, at Hunterston nuclear power station has kept secret the details of a known and serious risk of fire in the plant by claiming that releasing the information would threaten national security. In May 2007 the UK Government’s Nuclear Installations Inspectorate (NII) cited ‘significant shortfalls’ in the latest review of safety at Hunterston B submitted by operator British Energy. The NII decreed that a particular fire risk required urgent investigation. It gave no details of the risk in question.
The Sunday Herald, which has been pursuing the matter for some time, managed to get a little information last July, by using Freedom of Information legislation. The Health and Safety Executive, to which the NII belongs, then indicated that the risk related to ‘shortcomings’ in safeguards intended to prevent a ‘Gas Circulator Hall oil spray fire’. It refused to say more than this and when asked to do so it waited for fourteen months before maintaining secrecy on the issue.
Last Friday the HSE told The Sunday Herald that: ‘Putting this information into the public domain would open up access to sensitive information to those who may choose to use it for purposes that could threaten life, threaten national security, or help criminals to commit crime’.
Common sense suggests that if the quoted ‘shortfalls’ in safeguards at Hunterston leave open the risk of fire at a nuclear plant which was due to close in 2011, there is little need to worry about terrorist action. An ageing and problem-beset plant with inadequate safety and, recently, a poor record of reliability is more likely to threaten life and national security all by itself. No need to wait for terrorists.
Hunterston opened in 1976, was due to be closed in 2011, was given an extension to 2016 by British Energy who now hint that they may keep it open until 2021. Continuing boiler problems see the station’s two reactors operating at no more than 70% capacity.
It is a matter of grave national concern that the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate seems to be pretty toothless in enforcing acceptable standards of safety across the spectrum of installations under its purview.
We have reported previously on its six year failure to get the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) to address its list of serious safety concerns over the infamous ‘gravel gerties’ at AWE’s ‘nuclear weapons factory’ at Burghfield in Berkshire. Now NII seems to be equally ineffective in getting the necessary result at Hunterston.