Worth Reading

Mike Sadnicki, Fred Barker, Gordon MacKeron, "THORP: The Case for Contract Renegotiation", commissioned by Friends of the Earth, June 1999, 145 p., £ 10

This will be a tough nut to crack for the plutonium industry. The report the three well known authors examines the case by for renegotiating the contracts between the British reprocessing company BNFL for its THORP plant, and German and Japanese utilities and adopting an alternative approach to spent fuel management based on interim storage and direct disposal. As Patrick Green, Friends of the Earth's Senior Energy, Nuclear and Climate Campaigner, pointed out: "FOE's purpose in commissioning the report was not to simply repeat the environmental case against reprocessing. Instead, it was to critically assess whether these contractual commitments are, on economic or environmental grounds, still worth fulfilling."

The results show considerable future costs savings arising from the ending of reprocessing by the end of 1999: ranging from
- £440 million to £526 million for German contracts and
- £209 million to £571 million for Japanese contracts.
Fresh fuel for the debate over the phase-out of spent fuel reprocessing.

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