Trawsfynydd’s Legacy - North West Wales

The nuclear reactor

Construction of the Trawsfynydd Magnox Nuclear Power Station in Eryri National Park began in 1959 and was completed in 1965. It is one of 26 Magnox stations built in the 1950’s to 1970’s. They were developed as dual function reactors, able to produce plutonium for nuclear weapons as well as electricity. [1]

To date,Trawsfynydd is the only inland nuclear powerstation in the UK, using Llyn Trawsfynydd as its source of cooling water. This reservoir was originally built in 1926 to supply water to the Maentwrog hydroelectric plant that remains in operation. [2]

The Trawsfynydd site, including the lake and the hydroelectric plant, is owned by Magnox Ltd, rebranded as Nuclear Restoration Services, a subsidiary of the UK Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, [NDA]. [3]

Decommissioning

Generation at Trawsfynydd stopped in 1991 after 26 years and decommissioning the plant commenced in 1993, defueling was completed by 1997 with fuel elements removed from the site and transported to Sellafield for reprocessing. [4]

The original plan for the nuclear station was to allow the radioactivity of the core to naturally decay and cool, making it cheaper and easier to finally demolish the reactor buildings and return the site to its original state. The Care and Maintenance phase was to last around 60 or more years from closure. This timetable was abandoned in 2019 when it was found that the Trawsfynydd reactor buildings were deteriorating and could not be relied on to remain safe for this length of time. The decommissioning programme has had to be considerably accelerated with currently unknown impacts of the full costs of the clean-up. [5]

It is not possible to get any realistic estimate of the full cost of making safe and restoring any given nuclear site. The NDA acknowledges that it still does not have full understanding of the condition of the 17 sites across its estate, including the 10 former Magnox power stations. The Parliamentary Public Accounts Committee have described this inability to put a figure on the cost to the public purse for decommissioning as a ‘Sorry Saga’. Safely dismantling the current nuclear stations will cost generations of UK taxpayers an unknown sum likely to stretch to well over £100 billion. [6]

The Trawsfynydd site is described as the ‘lead and learn’ site for decommissioning the Magnox reactors and lessons learned and costs will be applied to all 26 Magnox reactors in the UK. [5] It is important that the learning process and clean up techniques includes the whole site and is not just limited to the perimeter of the reactor buildings. For this to happen it is necessary for the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority and all involved to both understand and acknowledge the extent of contamination of the whole Trawsfynydd site including the lake.

Radioactive Contamination

During its operational phase Trawsfynydd was licensed to vent gaseous radioactive waste, mostly carbon dioxide, to the atmosphere and also liquid radioactive waste to the lake, including water from the cooling ponds. [7]

The site contains known areas of radioactive and non-radioactive contaminated land and groundwater, resulting primarily from the generation phase of the station’s life. [8]

In addition to this historic contamination of the site, Nuclear Restoration Services are proposing dumping contaminated rubble from the urgent demolition work on the reactor building into the now redundant cooling ponds. The Nuclear Free Local Authorities of Wales have expressed their concern over this plan and are demanding that this rubble be contained within purpose built and properly shielded containment fearing that the old cooling ponds would leak further contamination into the ground and lake. [9]

Maentwrog Community Council expressed concerns many years ago about contamination of the Trawsfynydd site and about the cooling ponds that have been leaking since the 1970’s. They were told in 2006 that there would be borehole analysis to determine the extent of groundwater contamination, to date no such report has been published. [10]

The fact that the cooling ponds leak has been confirmed by Magnox itself in a Strategic Environmental Assessment in 2014. Their report states: ‘The radioactive land and groundwater contamination is associated with leakage from the ponds during the 1970s/80s, due to a joint weakness in the pond structure. Extensive (9500m3 ) sub-surface low level radioactive land contamination has resulted.’ [8]

Maentwrog Community Council in their written evidence to the Wales Parliamentary Committee in 2016 also expressed their concern that plutonium particles had been documented as present in the lake sediment. [10] It has not been possible to confirm the presence of plutonium through a literature search. Monitoring for radiation at the site has used gamma ray detectors, but plutonium is a very weak emitter of gamma rays so would not be detected in lake sediments using geiger counters on the surface. [7, page 7]

Health Risks

The presence of plutonium in the lake sediments adds to the concern that emissions from the nuclear plant, even though they were properly permitted, could be building up in the local environment, including food chains. Health effects of low level doses of radiation have long been a controversial subject. Canadian-American scientist Dr Rosalie Bertell researched the incidents and possible long term effects of radiation from nuclear weapons testing and the civil nuclear programme in the 1970’s publishing a book ‘No Immediate Danger’ in 1985 which documented the risks. [11] Her work was largely ignored and many nuclear physicists tried to debunk her work and her qualifications to question their assurances that there was no risk. There were even attempts on her life that caused her to move from the USA to Canada. [12]

In 2006, walking in Dr Bertell’s footsteps, Dr Chris Busby and others published a paper claiming to find a cluster of cancer cases associated with the Trawsfynydd reactor. [13 ] After this work was aired on a television programme in Wales in 2006 it was heavily criticised by the Welsh Cancer Intelligence and Surveillance Unit and other nuclear scientists who claimed that his work was flawed. Others thought differently including Michael Meacher, a former Environment minister in the Blair Government. He called on Health specialists to take the statistics seriously and called for a full public enquiry on the issue of long term nuclear safety and the impacts of low level radiation before any further nuclear plants were built. [14]

North Wales Live reported Dr Busby’s findings and questioned the relevant health officials, who were reluctant to comment, just saying that the matter would be considered elsewhere. Public Health Wales responded that they could consult with expert bodies if concerns were raised but at that time there were no ‘no ongoing investigations into cancer clusters in the Trawsfynydd area.’

[15]

The Western Mail called on the Health Authorities to publish its own study of all the available data rather than simply dismissing Busby’s work. Dr Busby had been unable to review all of the relevant data. [14]

Plaid Cymru councillor and cancer patient Linda Ann Jones is a councillor for Tegil ward, Llan Festiniog, north of Trawsfynydd. She has listened to concerns of local people about emissions from the nuclear station over many years, well before Busby’s report. Jones has urged the UK government to consider the survey’s results seriously and to launch an investigation into the risks posed to local communities by nuclear power plants before allowing new plants to be built. [14]

Conclusion.

The Green Party does not support further use of nuclear power for the generation of electricity. If honest and open accounting was used, nuclear power would be seen as a very expensive option for generating energy and it leaves a very costly legacy of waste and contamination. The culture of secrecy and misinformation, driven by the military nuclear programme, must end for the civil use of nuclear technology. The long term health effects of low level radiation and the robustness of current safety standards needs to be properly researched by independent scientists rather than those dependent on the nuclear industry for their livelihood. While Dr Busby’s work may be questioned, due in part to the withholding of relevant data from his research, the concerns that he and Councillor Jones have raised must be taken seriously by the relevant Health Authorities and the governments of Wales and the UK. To casually state that ‘no ongoing studies…’ are being carried out is unacceptable.

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