Briefings & Information

CND investigation:
NUKEM Nuclear Ltd and its links with British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL)

Introduction

On 4 May 199 the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions published what they purported to be an 'independent survey' of radioactive material transport packages.

The survey was carried out by Nukem Nuclear Ltd.

The DETR Press Release said:

"Commenting on the survey’s findings, Dr Reid said:

The transportation of radioactive materials is an issue of great public concern. I called for this independent survey in November [98] in order to establish the facts about contamination on the surface of containers transporting radioactive materials.

The survey results are reassuring and I am pleased that the nuclear industry appears to be adopting a cautious approach to the transportation of irradiated fuel…"

The DETR Press Release also stated categorically that the survey found that "there is no threat to public health from the transportation of radioactive materials…"

CND refutes the claim that this study is ‘independent’ and that the survey shows that "there is no threat to public health".

This briefing provides an explanation of why these claims are misleading and exaggerated.

The independence of the survey

The survey was carried out by the Cheshire based company Nukem Nuclear Ltd which is a wholly owned subsidiary of Nukem Nuklear Gmbh, a German nuclear company, that is in turn owned by NUKEM Gmbh (the NUKEM Group), which is in turn owned by RWE AG of Essen, Germany (see company structure diagram below).

Nukem Nuclear Ltd as part of the Nukem group specialises in remediation, decontamination and decommissioning of nuclear sites and facilities in Britain.

As Nukem Nuclear Ltd’s latest marketing brochure states:

"The NUKEM Group includes the world’s largest trading company for nuclear fuel…"

Nukem Gmbh is one of the ten largest corporations in Germany, active in the nuclear, petrochemical, solar energy and logistics software markets.

RWE AG of Essen, Germany, is one of the largest European corporations, with more than 137,000 employees and annual sales in excess of $40 billion.

RWE AG is a co-partner, owning 50% of Uranit Gmbh which is part of Urenco, the other two parts are owned by Dutch and British Companies, with the British component being BNFL.

Another part of the NUKEM Group, GNB Gmbh, where a forty five percent share is held has its nuclear activity listed as 'Transport and Storage Casks' and in Nukem Nuclear Ltd’s latest marketing brochure there is a picture of a nuclear flask with the title 'NUKEM Group Technology Container/Flasks'.

Aside from Nukem Nuclear’s vested interested in the continuation of the nuclear industry Nukem also has contracts underway where it is being paid by or in a partnership or consortium with BNFL:

• BNFL, Nukem and Rolls Royce Nuclear Engineering Services won a contract to dismantle the Windscale piles in 1997. The contract was to last eight years and was worth £54 million¹. BNFL’s latest annual report and accounts (1998) boldly states at the bottom of page 27 "winning the £54 million Windscale Pile 1 decommissioning contract was achieved in collaboration with BNFL Engineering Ltd, Rolls Royce and Nukem." This contract involves dismantling and removing for treatment and storage the core of the Windscale Pile One graphite nuclear reactor. NUKEM are responsible for the design, commissioning and operation of a treatment facility for all waste that arises from the decommissioning process.
  
• Nukem won a £27 million contract as part of the decommissioning of Berkeley Magnox nuclear power station. The contract involves emptying radioactive waste pits on-site, conditioning the waste material and placing it in interim storage on site². Berkeley was part of Magnox electric plc which was taken over by BNFL at the end of January 1998. The new BNFL owned magnox generation business group HQ is based at Berkeley and BNFL are overseers of the decommissioning operation.
  
• BNFL Engineering, Nukem Nuklear, Technicatome, Morrison Knudsen International and Kobe steel formed a consortium in July 1997 to 'scrap' the Chernobyl nuclear reactor known as the International Consortium Chernobyl³. A year later this consurtium signed a contract with EnergoAtom for engineering consulting services at Chernobyl⁴. It is not known what the monetary value or details of this contract are.
  
• Nukem Nuclear Ltd also proudly boast in their latest marketing brochure that they have conducted 'Design, Feasibility and Option Studies' for BNFL amongst others.

Conclusion

• The contracts and commercial links that CND has managed to uncover between BNFL and Nukem should have been sufficient to disqualify this company from conducting this so called 'independent survey' for the DETR.
  
• There are other companies and organisation more highly qualified and regarded as 'independent' in Britain such as the National Radiological Protection Board who could have been commissioned to conduct this survey.
  
• The Department of the Environment Transport & the Regions should publicly withdraw this study immediately and employ a independent company or organisation to carry out this work.

The substance of the DETR survey

CND questions the reports findings, the extent of the surveying conducted and the narrow conclusion drawn by the Government and BNFL that spent nuclear fuel transportation poses 'no danger to the public'.

Even the limited extent of the survey by NUKEM does not support such a conclusion.

CND problems with report:

• Only twenty per cent of all nuclear flask movements were surveyed over an eight week period. All flasks should have been surveyed at their departure and arrival points as well as at a number of points such as marshalling yards along the route.
  
• Ground surveys of sidings were grossly inadequate with only one sample being taken at Dungeness and three at Willesden. More samples, including core samples of sleepers, should have been taken. As the report states 'the above survey is representative" - CND believes it was not extensive enough to be anywhere near being 'representative', it was a cursory look at the existing and potential future long-term contamination problems.

The bits of the report they choose to ignore:

The report confirms that ‘sweating’ (see endnotes below) does occur on nuclear fuel flask transports. On one occasion the amount of radioactivity on a flask increased by 285% during transport, the average increase was 177%.

10 instances of ‘measurable non-fixed beta-gamma’ contamination were found in the flasks surveyed. This is around 10% of those flasks surveyed.

In a nutshell, even this tainted and inadequate survey proves that radioactive materials can be found on spent nuclear fuel flasks.

Conclusion

The bottom line as far as CND is concerned is that there is no safe level of radiation. Even one instance of radioactive contamination on the outside of a flask is one too many.

This report states that between 5 and 15% of all flasks transports will have some level of radioactive contamination.

This is not a clear indication that these transports 'pose no danger to the public'.

The report does not refute the five main concerns CND has with spent nuclear fuel transport, that:

• Nuclear flasks do sweat radioactivity and as a result can give off significant levels of radioactivity. This has occurred many times in the past and will continue to occur in the future;
  
• This radioactive material can flake off the contaminated flask, can become airborne, can travel unquantifiable distances and can be ingested by an individual;
  
• Radiation does cause cancer;
  
• There is no safe level of radiation;
  
• Trains carrying flask have had accidents in the past. Whilst we agree with BNFL that none of them have, so far, led to a 'a release of radioactivity' that is, we believe, more to do with luck than design.

There is clearly a risk. The argument is over what level of risk there is and is it acceptable. As far as CND is concerned the risk from spent nuclear fuel transport is significant and is totally unacceptable.

Notes

The Transnuklear Affair
In 1987 containers of nuclear waste were discovered where they shouldn’t have been, with contents different to those listed in their accompanying papers. Transnuklear, two-thirds of which was owned by Nukem GmbH, was the biggest nuclear transport company in Germany. They had classified nuclear waste as 'low-level' when it should have been classified as 'high-level' in order to cut costs. They also illegally dumped, using false papers, nuclear waste from the Neckarwestheim nuclear reactor into the North Sea in order to cut costs. More than two thousand drums of nuclear waste were illegally stored by Transnuklear at the Mol installation in Belgium as well as at several German nuclear reactors and other sites.⁵

All of this was done using bribery and had been going on since at least the early eighties.

According the investigation by the European Parliament that Transnuklear gave around forty Mol employees 'gifts in cash and in kind (sums of DM 10,000 and private cars on several occasions)'⁶

Since this scandal came to light two suspects (a Transnuklear manager and a manager at Preussen Elektra) committed suicide: one whilst in jail, the other after police interrogation. And five Transnuklear employees were fined up to 40,000 DM. In Belgium the former head of the waste processing division at Mol and another person employed by Mol and Transnuklear were convicted of bribery and falsifying papers and each sentenced to five years in jail. The former Director General of Mol was sentenced to four months in prison and fined.⁷

A perfect example of how senior executives of Nukem and Transnuklear are still around today and still involved in Nukem is Dr Horst Keese who joined Nukem in 1969. From 1972 to 1984 he was the managing director of Transnuklear and a member of the board of Nuclear Transport Ltd. He then went on to become General Manager of the Nukem Fuel Cycle Services Division until 1990. He is now described as a senior advisor to Nukem on nuclear energy and fuel cycle matters.

Whilst CND has been unable to directly connect Dr Horst Keese with any of the bribery and falsifying of papers that went on at Transnuklear during the mid to late 80’s he was its managing director.

The Kazakhstan debacle
In October 1996 World Wide Minerals took over the management of the uranium mining and processing facilities of Tselliny Gorno-Khimicheskii Kombinat (TGK) near Stepnogorsk in Kazakhstan with an option to purchase ninety per cent of the facility.

In 1997 World Wide entered into a Strategic Alliance Agreement with Kazatomprom, the Kazakhstan State-owned uranium company, to develop three existing uranium mines and four new deposits in Southern Kazakhstan.

Two years and over $25 million later World Wide Minerals were told that they would not be allowed to export any uranium from Kazakhstan. In April 1998 the company pulled out of Kazakhstan and Nukem got the lucrative contract.

Kazakhstan contains a quarter of the worlds uranium reserves.

In May 1998 World Wide filed a suit in the Washington DC Federal District Court claiming $220 million in reimbursement plus damages from the Kazakhstan Government.

In February of this year World Wide amended their lawsuit to include Nukem and increased the amount of damages they wanted to $300 million.

World Wide are alleging that the Kazakhstan Government and Kazatomprom conspired together and with Nukem to grant Nukem uranium marketing rights which had beeen contractually granted to World Wide, in breach of the investment agreement. World Wide is also charging the defendants with fraud and racketeering under the US Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organization (RICO) Act.

Whilst the case above and the one below involve operations in the US and not directly the British arm of Nukem nuclear all parts of the operations are closely intertwined.

As one of the US arm of Nukem’s press releases so succinctly put it when publicising Nukem’s success at obtaining the Windscale Pile One contract with BNFL:

'Nukem nuclear technologies [the US arm] works closely with Nukem Nuclear Ltd to identify and assist clients in the US market… Both companies have access to the other members of the Nukem group to combine the extensive international nuclear engineering expertise, resources and technologies to provide innovative solutions through the application of proven technologies.'⁸

The Sheep Mountain Partnership affair
US Energy Corp and its majority owned subsidiary Crested Corp operating as the joint venture USECC entered into partnership with Nukem and its subsidiary Cycle Resource Investment Corp (CRIC). This partnership was known as the Sheep Mountain Partnership (SMP) and its purpose was to produce and market uranium.

In July 1991 US Energy Corp and Crested Corp filed a civil action in the US district court of Colorado alleging that Nukem, CRIC and its affiliate 'fraudulently misrepresented facts, concealed information, misappropriated partnership assets, and engaged in various other wrongful acts relating to the acquisition and financing of uranium for SMP '.⁹

The biggest falling out USECC and Nukem has was when Nukem was operating as the marketing agents for SMP. Nukem negotiated uranium importation contracts with the Commonwealth of Independent States to the United States. However, in order to stop CIS dumping cheap uranium onto the US market the US Government were imposing tariffs on such imports in excess of 100% of their value unless they were need to fulfil long-term contracts with US utilities that had been agreed before 5 March 1992. In this instance such imports were allowed to go ahead without tariffs because Nukem used five utility contracts that belonged to SMP to get the necessary exemption. However, rather than Nukem using the CIS uranium to meet those five SMP contracts, it instead sold the CIS uranium to other buyers. As a result SMP had to buy uranium at higher prices from other suppliers in order to meet its contractual obligations.

A counterclaim was filed by Nukem and almost three years later the companies agreed to submit their dispute to binding arbitration.

The panel of arbitrators found Nukem guilty of 'wrongdoing' and awarded USECC just over $15 million in damages. The panel also ordered Nukem to share past, present and future profits that arise out of the CIS uranium purchasing rights.

Whilst the arbitration panel rejected the claim that Nukem had violated the marketing and partnership agreements by entering into the CIS contracts it did conclude that with regard to the five SMP utility contracts 'Nukem without authority and without SMP’s permission or consent used the SMP uranium supply contracts, which were partnership assets, to obtain purchase rights for CIS uranium'.

In another part of the settlement CRIC and SMP conveyed all of their interests to USECC of mining properties in south-central Wyoming including three open pit and seven underground uranium mines built at a cost of over sixty million dollars. SMP had three uranium supply contracts, Nukem got two, USECC got one. A uranium purchase contract with a Canadian producer was split fifty/fifty between the two sides.

Nukem appealed parts of the arbitration award through the Colorado Court of Appeals and lost.

What is ‘sweating’?

The extract below is from a report done jointly by the governments and/or regulatory bodies of Britain, France, Germany and Switzerland on surface contamination of nuclear spent fuel transports.

'Surface contamination is not caused by leakage from the interior of the flasks. The cases of contamination found on the surfaces of transport flasks for spent fuel assemblies and in the well area of the transport wagon are linked to the loading of the transport flasks in the spent fuel pools of the nuclear power plants or their unloading at the reprocessing plant. In the cooling circuit and in the spent fuel pools of nuclear power plants, radioactivity exists both in dissolved form and in the form of particulate originating from corrosion and abrasion. Additional radioactive particulate occurs in the water during the loading processes due to the fact that radioactive deposits inside the flasks and on the surface of the fuel assemblies to be loaded are stirred up or mechanically abraded.

There are the following possible causes of non-fixed contamination:

1. A transformation of formerly fixed contamination on the surface of the flask - which in this form cannot be discovered by smear tests during the outgoing inspection in the nuclear power plant - to non-fixed (removable by wiping) contamination which on renewed smear sampling, e.g. upon arrival at the reprocessing plant, can be detected (in the literature, this phenomenon is referred to as 'sweating' or 'weeping').
   
2. The escape of residual amounts of contaminated pond water from pores, connecting gaps and cavities (e.g. in the trunnions) or the dislodgement of radioactive particulate that has settled in these places (referred to in the literature as 'hide-out'). The flasks have several areas that are difficult to decontaminate e.g. cavities, crevices, gaps, joints, etc. which need to be protected from contaminated pool water by suitable measures. Release of droplets or a dislodgement of deposited larger particles as a result of thermal and mechanical effects during the shipment may lead to localised surface contamination (hot spots) on the flask or in the well area of the transport wagon lying below.
   
3. The transfer of contamination on loading and unloading the transport flask through contaminated hoisting gear, vehicles, protective devices, gloves, overshoes, etc. after regulatory controls.

A lack of rigour in the decontamination and monitoring procedures by some plants is responsible for the occurrence of the observed surface contaminations.'

Endnotes
¹Uranium Institute News Briefing 97/37 and 'Robots will dismantle debris from Windscale fire', the Times, September 10, 1997
²Uranium Institute News Briefing 96/15, 10-16 April 1996
³Uranium Institute News Briefing 97/30 23-29 July 1997
⁴ Uranium Institute News Briefing, 15-21 July 1998, NB98.29-22
⁵ WISE-Amsterdam newsletter, 22 February 1991, no.347
⁶Report drawn up on behalf of the Committee of Inquiry on the handling and transport of nuclear material on the results of the inquiry, 24 June 1988, European Parliament session Documents, Series A, Document A 2-120/88/Part A
⁷WISE-Amsterdam newsletter, 22 February 1991, no.347
⁸Nukem Nuclear Technologies Corp Press Release, 18 December 1997
⁹US Energy Corp Press Release, 22 March 1994

Further information
CND Information sheet on spent nuclear fuel transport by train

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