- German Auto Giant will sell electric vehicles using fuel cells
Reuters Environment News
LONDON - Daimler-Benz AG predicted on Monday that sales of its electric "fuel cell" cars powered by methanol would reach 100,000 by the year 2004.
Daimler and its Canadian joint venture partner Ballard Power Systems Inc have staked $320 million on the new technology, but critics say factors such as cost lessen the attraction of fuel cells as an answer to today's air pollution problems.
"We expect to sell 100,000 fuel cell cars by 2004. We expect our global market share of fuel cell cars to be huge -- well over 50 per cent by 2005," said Dr Ferdinand Panik, a senior Daimler-Benz executive heading the fuel cell project.
The U.S., a key market for Daimler-Benz's new engine, thinks the project has potential, but a U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) official said the 2004 time-scale the German manufacturer is aiming for was over-optimistic.
"Fuel cell cars have potential, but they are still too expensive," said DoE official Steve Chalk at a fuel cell conference. "They need more research and development."
The DOE itself has ploughed 50 million dollars into researching low emission car engines in association with the big three automakers, Ford, General Motors and Chrysler.
To meet stringent U.S. emission laws, the department is looking to build a fuel-efficient low-emission production prototype vehicle by 2004.
Chalk would not say what engine system the DoE production prototype would use, but indicated engine types other than fuel cells, including a low-emission diesel engine, were more likely to meet its selection criteria.
A fuel cell produces electricity in an electrochemical reaction between hydrogen and oxygen. Unlike a conventional combustion engine, it produces little or no toxic emissions, and produces water as its only by-product.
The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) has tipped fuel cells to become an important motor for the 21st century but said conventional engines would still be providing 90 percent of the world's power in 15 years time.
Daimler-Benz and Ballard are undaunted.
"By the end of 1999 we will be able to produce a commercially viable fuel cell car," said Ballard Vice President Mossadiq Umedaly, adding the new engine needed sales volume of around 250,000 a year to be competitive on a cost basis for the manufacturer.
Before the critical sales mass is reached, Daimler is likely to have to subsidise the cars in the early days.
"Fuel cell cars will succeed when their efficiency, cost, and performance matches conventional fossil fuel engines," said Dr Panik of Daimler-Benz.
Daimler-Benz controls 25 percent of Ballard Power Systems and 66.6 percent of the two group's August 29 joint venture DBB Fuel Cell Engines.
- Energy Efficient Building Practices can save Asia the Earth
Reuters Environment News
SINGAPORE, (Reuter) - Inefficient building methods are costing Southeast Asia the earth, an environmental technologist said on Monday.
"The average hotel or office block is very wasteful in terms of energy consumption and that's bad news for ... the environment," Justin Taylor, general manager of Singapore energy efficiency consultancy, Super Solutions, told Reuters.
The environment has leapt to the top of the region's political agenda in recent weeks after a throat-clutching smog, fuelled by smoke from Indonesian forest and bush fires, began choking much of Southeast Asia.
The region has seen phenomenal economic growth over the last two decades, but is plagued by heavy pollution.
A quick and dirty dash for growth combined with a desire to bring modern comforts -- especially air conditioning -- to a burgeoning consumer class has made the region an energy inefficient nightmare, Taylor said.
He thinks power bills could be slashed by 30 to 40 percent if modern construction materials and more efficient heating, cooling and lighting systems were installed.
Unlike the computer industry where technology throws forward more advanced, efficient and cheaper products every year, the construction sector has fallen far behind the state of the art, Taylor said.
Simple examples include windows that reflect or retain heat from daylight depending on building needs, while hi-tech lighting brings savings in efficiency and longer bulb life.
Better planning for air-conditioning needs can also bring savings for both power and water, an important factor because of the vast use of cooling systems in buildings throughout Asia.
Taylor is so sure he can save companies cash by making them energy efficient he pays for them to change wasteful ways, footing the bill for plant, equipment and new materials used and charging a fee based on the cost savings achieved.
"We share in the risk and in the performance of our recommendations. It's value added we are paid for," Taylor said.
"If you look at the return on investment savings on energy bring (to) companies, it is often more substantial than the return on investment they get from their core business," he added.
Using power stations as a key measure of economic development also encouraged inefficient energy use, fuelling Southeast Asia's growing pollution problem, Taylor said.
"Building more power stations just makes people use more power," he said.
Power station building is seen as a barometer of the economic maturity of developing nations, with the more commissioned seen reflective of a country's economic activity.
"The question we should be asking is which is more worldly, the country which consumes more electricity or the country that uses it more wisely?" Taylor said.
- Chernobyl re-start delayed after poor welds are discovered
Reuters Environment News
LONDON (Reuter) - Ukraine's Chernobyl nuclear reactor has delayed restarting after routine maintenance following the discovery of poor welds on coolant pipes, nuclear news agency NucNet said on Monday.
Chernobyl-3, the only remaining reactor on the site of the 1986 nuclear accident, now was expected to resume operations in mid-November, six weeks later than planned, NucNet said.
"During maintenance operations, poor welds were found on about 50 seams in coolant pipes and the necessary remedial work is expected to push the expected restart date back to mid-November," it said.
The unit was taken out of service on July 21.
Separately, Ukrainian government inspectors are still carrying out a special safety review of Chernobyl-3 in response to a critical report by international saftey experts, NucNet said.
The World Association of Nuclear Operators (WANO), an organisation set up after the Chernobyl disaster, found equipment flaws, inadequate protections against fire and sloppy maintenance during an inspection of the reactor.
It was in the worst condition of some 50 plants inspected to date by the WANO, the French industry ministry said last Tuesday when announcing the WANO report.
Ukraine has been under international pressure to close the number three reactor by the year 2000. Earlier this year, the Group of Seven nations -- Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States -- pledged $300 million to help build a new shelter.
Chernobyl's number four reactor exploded in 1986, sending a plume of radioactive fallout across much of Europe, but about 5,000 people still work at the Chernobyl centre.
The number two reactor was stopped after a 1992 fire and plant number one was closed in 1996 in line with plans to phase out all operations at the site.
President Leonid Kuchma has pledged to close the plant in return for $3.1 billion in Western grants and credits.
- Radioactive particles found in sea off the shore of Scotland
Reuters Environment News
LONDON, (Reuter) - Divers searching the sea close to Dounreay nuclear power plant in northern Scotland have found radioactive particles dating back to the 1960s and 1970s, Dounreay officials have said.
The particles, about the size of a grain of sand, would cause "slight ulceration to the skin," if anyone came into contact with them, Dounreay's Derek Milnes said. But he said such a scenario was unlikely.
"You are 10 times more likely to win the Lottery than to come into contact with a particle," he said.
A team of five divers who searched up to 200 metres away from the shore and 100 metres deep found a total of 34 particles over a period of 18 days during August and September.
Dounreay, operated by the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) conducts regular inspections of the area around the plant which is near Caithness, but this latest offshore seabed survey was part of a major investigation.
"This was a major survey of the seabed. We have been finding one particle a month for the last two years," Milnes said.
The findings are now being analysed and a report is likely to be made before the end of the year.
Dounreay, a site that imports foreign spent nuclear fuel for reprocessing, is the subject of rising concern from environmentalists.
In August this year the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA) reduced the time foreign nuclear waste can be stored at Dounreay before it is repatriated from 25 years to 10.
Although the agency was subsequently asked by the British government to engage in fresh consultations the time limit is unlikely to be raised back to 25 years and could be reduced below 10 years, according a source at SEPA.
If the 10 year limit is upheld after SEPA reports back within the next couple of months Dounreay's business is likely to be hit.
A potential contract with the Australian government to send 1,300 nuclear rods for reprocessing at Dounreay could already be in jeopardy since the Australians envisage receiving their reprocessed fuel within 10 to 20 years.
Scotland's decisive "yes" vote in last week's devolution referendum has added a further twist to the fate of Dounreay since its operations would come under the remit of the projected Scottish assembly.
- "Decommissioning Connecticut Nuclear Plant is Safe": Northeast
Reuters Environment News
BERLIN, Connecticut - The Connecticut Yankee nuclear plant in Haddam Neck, Conn., does not pose any health threat despite allegations of mismanagement and radioactive contamination, Northeast Utilities officials said Friday.
"There is no threat to the health and safety of the public or our workers," Northeast Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer Michael Morris told a news conference.
Morris said his assessment was based on a thorough review of the facts currently available. He said the 582-megawatt plant will be decommissioned safely, with complete disclosure to the public and regulators.
Morris denied allegations by state officials that the company covered up two radioactive releases at Connecticut Yankee in 1978 and 1989.
"We believe that the site is safe, we believe that it's safe for our employees, and we're going to continue to dig into those facts," Morris said.
Northeast Nuclear President and Chief Executive Officer Bruce Kenyon said the utility plans to hire an independent panel of radiological experts to conduct tests around the plant. He said this was intended to remove any doubt about present or future public health risks, and that the panel's initial report should be ready within four weeks.
"We're bringing in this third party team because... we want the results to have unquestioned credibility with the public," Kenyon said.
Connecticut Yankee was shut down last December after 28 years of operation because its main owner and operator, Northeast Utilities, found it too expensive to operate.
Northeast owns 49 percent of Connecticut Yankee, with the balance owned by seven other New England utilities. Northeast estimates it will cost $427 million to decontaminate and dismantle the site. The plant's decommissioning is expected to begin next year and be completed in 2004.
Connecticut Gov. John Rowland, Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, and state regulators are seeking to shelter the approximately 1.7 million Northeast Utilities customers from a portion of the cleanup bill.
Blumenthal said Tuesday that Northeast should foot the bill because its gross mismanagement in effect created "a nuclear waste dump site in the state of Connecticut."
Asked about Blumenthal's comment, Morris said, "I thought that was a bit much." He said if federal regulators decide that mismanagement caused an increase in decommissioning costs, "we ought not ask the customer to pay that."
"Some fairly serious accusations have been made," Kenyon said, adding that many of them were not supported by the facts.
"If it turns out that these assertions are true... then I will share in public anger," Kenyon said.
Morris said the allegations have caused "undue concern" to people who live near the Connecticut Yankee plant. "It is unfortunate that an issue has been raised based on (only) one half of the story being known," he said.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has ultimate authority to decide who will pay how much for decommissioning.
- Indigo Girls Tour: "No Nuclear Waste on Native Lands"
Press Release
Contact: Nicole Vandenberg, 206-625-6939
St. Paul, MN-- Grammy award-winning Indigo Girls Amy Ray and Emily Saliers embark on their second annual Honor the Earth tour this fall to raise awareness of current and proposed environmental injustices on Native American lands.
The tour is timed to coincide with the US Congress's deliberation over legislation known as the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1997. If passed this October, the act would allow nuclear utilities to transport casks of high-level nuclear waste across 43 states and store it "temporarily" at Yucca Mountain, a sacred site on Western Shoshone land.
"This is a big decision. The country is about to decide to dump 25 years of a bad idea--nuclear energy, now nuclear waste--on Indian land. Nuclear energy has failed us for 25 years, and now utilities want to poison our land for 250,000 years," says Indigo Girls' Emily Saliers.
More than 50 million Americans live within 1/2 mile of projected nuclear waste transport routes. The largest of the transport casks--which have yet to be designed or tested--would contain the radiological equivalent of 200 Hiroshima bombs. Feasibility studies at Yucca Mountain have already cost 1.7 billion, with all evidence pointing to serious dangers. The area has had 621 earthquakes in the last 20 years alone.
The utilities want to get liability for the waste off their hands and off their sites, and they are targeting isolated Native lands as the solution," said Winona LaDuke, a national spokesperson for Honor the Earth. "If Congress passes this legislation, it will not only jeopardize Native peoples and lands, it will essentially put 50 million citizens in danger as the waste is being trucked from East Coast reactor sites to Yucca Mountain. This is simply an environmental and public health nightmare."
The Honor the Earth tour will kick off in upstate New York in the Mohawk community of Akwesasne on September 7 and end in Missoula, Montana on October 2.
Tour highlights include two special "No Nukes" concerts with:
The Honor the Earth tour will couple its focus on preventing nuclear waste dumping on Native lands with support for environmental justice initiatives in native communities along the tour route. Examples of these organizations' work includes:
Honor the Earth is a joint project of the Seventh Generation Fun, Indigenous Women's Network and Indigenous Environmental Network. A list of tour beneficiaries and a tour itinerary is attached.
Indigo Girls
Honor the Earth Tour '97
9/7 St. Regis Mohawk Community at Akwesasne, NY
9/8 Sheas Theater, Buffalo, NY
9/9 Landmark Theater, Syracuse, NY
9/10 Palace Theater, Albany, NY
9/12 Mullins Center, Amherst, MA
9/13 Grey Gym, Lewiston, ME
9/14 Penobscot Nation, ME
9/15 McCann Center Fieldhouse, Poughkeepsie, NY
9/16 Zembo Temple, Harrisburg, PA
9/18 Eastern Cherokee Cultural Grounds, Eastern Cherokee Nation, NC
9/19 Appalachian St. Student Union, Boone, NC
9/20 Buruss Auditorium, Blacksburg, VA
9/21 Township Auditorium, Columbia, SC
9/22 Johnny Mercer Civic Center, Savannah, GA
9/24 Warner Theater, Washington, DC with Bonnie Raitt
9/25 Jacksonville Theater, Jacksonville, FL
9/26 Sundome, Tampa, FL
9/27 Coral Sky Pavillion, W. Palm Beach, FL
9/30 The Joint at the Hard Rock, Las Vegas, NV, with Bonnie Raitt, Graham Nash and Jackson Browne
10/2 University of Missoula, Missoula, MT
- Britain is told it needs a policy to bury its nuclear waste.
Winnipeg Free Press
LONDON(Reuter) - Britain needs a cohesive policy to deal with intermediate, rather than low level, nuclear waste and should bury it, a leading expert said.
"Successive governments have sought to implement. polices intended to lead to final disposal of radioactive waste. In practice only in respect of low level waste has this been successful." said Sir Gordon Beveridge, chairman of the Radioactive Waste Management Advisory Committee (RWMAC) an independent body that advises the government.
Britain has large volumes of radioactive waste, the results of nearly 50 years of producing electricity from nuclear power plants, its military programme and from over 30 years of reprocessing of nuclear fuel, of which the country is a world leader.
Beveridge said Britain's attempt to form a long-term strategy ended this year when a local council refused the government's disposal agency NIREX permission to build a storage site.
After spending 250 million stg and six years investigating the suitability of its Longlands Farm site in Cumbria, northwest England, for long term storage NIREX was refused planning permission by Cumbria County Council.
Beveridge said the options for disposing intermediate waste was restricted to two choices - perpetual supervised storage that would necessitate continual surveillance and maintenance, or underground disposal.
He said the storing of waste in a deep repository was the more viable of the two.
"RWMAC is of the view that the policy of sustainable development can only be achieved in relation to intermediate level waste, by its permanent disposal deep underground," he said.
Beveridge added that there did not appear to be major technical difficulties in the joint disposal of intermediate and high level waste.
But firm government commitment was needed for it to succeed as well as a change in the public perception of radioactive waste, he added.
"An important element to the success or otherwise of developing a repository, will be to educate the public about risk so that a rational comparison can be made by individuals between disposal of radioactive and other toxic wastes" the RWMAC chairman said.
Intermediate waste includes nuclear reactor components and irradiated metal cladding for nuclear reactor fuel.
High level waste includes that arising from the reprocessing of irradiated (spent) nuclear fuel.
- French Minister brings accusations against nuclear reprocessing plant.
Reuters Environment News
PARIS - France's Environment Minister Dominique Voynet on Tuesday accused the country's nuclear reprocessing company Cogema of breaking safety rules in cleaning up a clogged discharge pipe that empties into the Channel.
Voynet ordered the clean-up to be suspended until it could be assured that no nuclear material could escape.
The environmental group Greenpeace has accused Cogema of leaving radioactive waste 250 metres (yards) off a beach during the clean-up at the La Hague reprocessing plant near Cherbourg.
"It can be ascertained today that Cogema failed to carry out instructions given by the Direction of Nuclear Facilities Safety (DSIN). A police report has been prepared," Voynet, the leader of the French Greens, told reporters called to the ministry for her statement.
"I will allow the clean-up operations to resume only when total confinement is assured," she said.
She added she would wait for Cogema's proposals to ensure confinement and would later review the rules imposed for discharge from the La Hague plant.
Greenpeace hailed Voynet's decision, but said it had demanded that she order a full study on the impact of the clean-up on the environment.
"It should be clear that, for Greenpeace, the only option is that no more radioactive waste is pumped into the sea," it said.
Greenpeace has already lodged a complaint against Cogema, accusing it of letting some 50 kg (110 lb) of nuclear waste spew into the sea during the clean-up of the La Hague plant's five-km (three-mile) discharge pipe.
La Hague, a mainstay of France's powerful nuclear industry, reprocesses spent nuclear fuel including plutonium from countries including Britain, Germany and Japan.
Greenpeace said earlier this year it had found high radioactivity levels in waste entering the Channel. Cogema said the measurements were invalid because the samples were taken too close to the discharge pipe.
Voynet has indefinitely banned fishing and yachting in the area, saying she would not wait for additional safety studies before acting.
Greenpeace said earlier this week that its divers found two nuclear waste drums, a filtration chamber and 20 metres of pipe off a public beach near the plant on the Channel.
It said the items were emitting "dangerous radiation levels".
Plant director Patrick Ledermann has said the drums would be gone within a few days.
In a separate development, Prime Minister Lionel Jospin said in a letter to a fellow Socialist MP released to the press that he asked state utility Electricite de France (EDF) to scrap controversial plans to build a nuclear plant at Carnet, near the Loire estuary in western France.
- Two-thirds of France's Mururoa nuclear weapons test site dismantled.
Reuters Environment News
PAPEETE, French Polynesia - France has dismantled two-thirds of the installlations in its now closed nuclear test site at Mururoa in the South Pacific, military sources said on Saturday.
The sources, quoting site commander General Michel Boileau speaking at Mururoa on Thursday, said the installations would be entirely dismantled by next July.
The test site was closed after a final, internationally-decried series of underground tests in 1995-1996.
France has pledged not to conduct further tests for the warheads equipping its independent nuclear deterrent force but to carry out computer simulations instead.
Some 500 people are now employed in the dismantling operations at Mururoa. "In July 1998, all that will remain here will be a platoon of foreign legionnaires, about 30 men," Boileau was quoted as saying.
Monitoring will however be maintained for five to 10 years to verify radioactivity levels in the area where France conducted dozens of tests over three decades.
- Greenpeace says reprocessing plant is polluting French sea.
Reuters Environment News
PARIS - The Greenpeace ecologist group levelled new accusations on Sunday against France's La Hague nuclear reprocessing plant, saying it had left radioactive waste just 250 metres (yards) off a local beach.
Greenpeace said in a statement distributed in Paris that its divers found two nuclear waste drums, a filtration chamber and 20 metres of pipe off a public beach near the plant on the English Channel.
"Measurements taken underwater show that these items emit dangerous radiation levels," the statement said.
The COGEMA operators of the plant were not immediately available for comment.
Greenpeace said the waste's presence seemed connected to recent COGEMA attempts to clean up the area at the end of the La Hague station's discharge pipe after earlier Greenpeace accusations that the pipe was spewing atomic waste.
"Now it appears to be even worse," Greenpeace said.
The group has already lodged a complaint against COGEMA, saying the plant polluted the sea and harmed marine life when it cleaned a clogged discharge pipe.
Greenpeace said some 50 kg (110 lb) of nuclear waste spewed out into the sea during operations to clean up the plant's five-km (three-mile) discharge pipe.
La Hague, a mainstay of France's powerful nuclear industry, reprocesses spent nuclear fuel including plutonium from countries including Britain, Germany and Japan.
Greenpeace said earlier this year it had found high radioactivity levels in waste entering the Channel. Cogema said the measurements were invalid because the samples were taken too close to the pipe.
Environment Minister Dominique Voynet, head of the Greens Party, has indefinitely banned fishing and yachting in the area, saying she would not wait for additional safety studies before acting.
- Japan high level nuclear waste storage stalemate seen solved soon.
Reuters Environment News
By Peter Lardner
TOKYO - Japan's northern prefecture of Aomori is expected to open a spent nuclear fuel storage facility on a trial basis in October at the earliest, an Aomori official said on Wednesday.
Commercial operation of the facility would help solve an expected shortage in Japan's storage space for spent nuclear fuel. Some of Japan's nuclear power plants are expected to run out of storage space as early as 2000.
"If discussions at the prefectural assembly and talks with municipal governments proceed without a hitch, the governor is expected to come up with a decision that would solve the stalemate in October," the official told Reuters.
The recent establishment of a special government panel, intended to give Aomori an opportunity to discuss nuclear plant safety issues with the central government, has paved the way for the new facility to open, he said.
The facility was originally scheduled to start receiving spent fuel from nuclear power plants across the country on a commercial basis in June.
However, a March explosion at a nuclear fuel reprocessing plant in Tokaimura on the Pacific coast prompted Aomori governor Morio Kimura to hold off the final approval for fuel shipments to start.
Following the accident, which exposed 37 workers to low levels of radiation, Kimura cited the formation of the inter-governmental panel, as well as a thorough examination of the cause of the accident, as prerequisites for the start-up of the facility.
The expected green light from the Aomori government will only enable Japan Nuclear Fuel Ltd (JNFL), operator of the 3,000-tonne storage unit, to transport 32 tonnes of spent nuclear fuel to the facility for testing purposes.
JNFL needs to make sure the unit passes government inspections and then will have to strike another set of agreements with the local government before being allowed to operate on a commercial basis.
It will take a few months to carry out the checks on the devices and to go through the inspections, a JNFL spokesman said.
Spent fuel stored at the new facility will be separated into radioactive nuclear waste and reusable uranium and plutonium at an adjacent reprocessing facility, scheduled to start operations in 2003.
Japan's 52 commercial reactors provide about one-third of the nation's electricity.
- Nuclear Regulatory Commission says flammable firestop seals are OK.
Reuters Environment News
By Vicki Allen
WASHINGTON - Federal regulators reaffirmed Wednesday that fire protection seals used in U.S. nuclear power plants are safe even though they are flammable, a notion that nuclear watchdogs said defied common sense.
The watchdogs, who have been waging war against a silicon foam material made by Dow Corning Corp that many U.S. nuclear power plants use in fire barrier seals, failed during a face-to-face meeting to convince Nuclear Regulatory Commission officials that the material posed a safety risk.
"The silicon material provides fire protection by being slowly consumed itself," Steven West, chief of the NRC's fire protection engineering section, said.
West said safety and installation problems cited by the Union of Concerned Scientists and the Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS) largely happened before 1988, when the NRC stiffened requirements.
"We think ... actions on the part of the NRC have resulted in significant impacts upon the industry," he said.
However, congressmen including Democrats Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware and Rep. Edward Markey of Massachusetts also have questioned use of the material as fire seals.
The NRC will respond to Markey's queries in October. In May, when he submitted questions to the agency, Markey called "the notion of using flammable materials as fire barriers in nuclear power plants ... as laughable as it is dangerous."
In Wednesday's meeting, NRC officials said the watchdogs lacked substantiantion for several claims, including that hydrogen gas seeping from a silicon foam barrier "exploded" sometime between 1984 and 1988 during construction of a plant, and that a seal design needed to pass a company safety test only once.
But the watchdogs said the NRC itself has found and documented numerous examples of the foam seals being improperly installed, requiring repairs and replacements.
"If you don't have compliance, you may or may not have a safety issue," Dave Lochbaum of the NIRS said.
"From a common sense point of view, a fire barrier shouldn't be combustible," Paul Gunter, of the Union of Concerned Scientists, said.
Gunter and Lochbaum said the foam gives off toxic fumes, thick black smoke and debris as it burns. They also said the foam tends to smolder and reignite after the fire is doused.
But NRC officials said it is a "sacrificial material" that slows fire by burning itself, and it has other properties useful to nuclear plants including ease of installation, minimal loss of effectiveness over time, and a variety of uses around the plant.
"There's a range of properties in these materials that make them extremely attractive," West said.
Gunter complained that the foam's flammability defies the NRC's own rules against combustible materials in fire seals. NRC officials said that rule may be changed as part of the commission's efforts to shift from "prescriptive rules" to rules based on risk and performance.
- British licensing body gives go-ahead for nuclear reprocessing plant.
Reuters Environment News
LONDON - A nuclear reprocessing plant in north-west England has been given the green light by Britain's nuclear inspectors who are satisfied it meets industry health and safety requirements, British Nuclear Fuels Plc (BNFL) said on Friday.
The Nuclear Installations Inspectorate (NII) of the government's Health and Safety Executive has given BNFL 'Consent to Operate' -- its final regulatory approval for the operating of the group's Thermal Oxide Reprocessing Plant (Thorp) plant in Sellafield.
"The NII is satisfied that the plant has been fully tested and that the operating procedures are in place," BNFL said in a statement.
The Thorp reprocessing plant started its quest for fully-commissioned status in March 1994.
"Thorp is a major facility which has received significant public attention and we are pleased that the plant has proved itself and we can get on with meeting our customer's contracts," said Brian Watson, Thorp assistant director, reprocessing operations.
BNFL said it was confident Thorp would now meet its target to reprocess 7,000 tonnes of nuclear fuel in its first ten years of operation.
Thorp has over 15 years' worth of orders valued at 12 billion pounds, two thirds of those from overseas.
It expects to make at least 500 million pounds profit in the first 10 years, taking into account decommissioning and capital costs, the group said.
BNFL has faced criticism from environmental groups recently over plans to fly nuclear waste from Europe and Japan into its Sellafield plant.