Lynne Edwards

The Windscale Inquiry: the Proceedings

Windscale is a site on the coast of Cumbria in the north-west of England (see Figure 7.1). It contains four 50-MW reactors (the ‘Calder Hall’ reactors) and an early 33-MW prototype AGR reactor. Far more significantly, it is the site at which fuel from the magnox reactors in the UK is reprocessed and where plutonium fuel for military use and for use in the experimental fast reactor at Dounreay in Scotland is fabricated.

Was the Windscale Inquiry Efficient

To most people, ‘efficiency’ conjures up the idea of reaching the right decision at the lowest cost possible. It is no part of the purpose of this report to judge whether Justice Parker reached the ‘right’ decision about THORP. The idea is to extend the common concept of efficiency to embrace a much wider objective — not just whether the ‘truth’ was arrived at, but whether the recommendation and ultimate decision by Parliament was based on not just the fullest possible technical, economic and even political information but also on an assessment of the public’s view of THORP. To ask the question whether the WPI in itself was efficient is not therefore enough. What matters is whether the system of which WPI was part is an efficient means for deciding on issues like reprocessing plant or fast reactor investment or developing a new and major coalmine, or siting a petrochemical plant, building a new motorway, and so on. The Inquiry, in other words, cannot be separated from the entire network of procedures of which it is part. This is to be emphasised for two reasons. First, criticism of the system need not be criticism of an inquiry which is part of that system and it certainly need not be criticism of the persons whose task it was to execute that inquiry and make the recommendations.

Whither Nuclear Opposition

There will be more, not less, debate about nuclear power and other energy sources in the UK in the future. Any analysis of the efficiency of decision-making in the energy field must allow for this factor, as must any prescriptions for change. It must be seriously questioned whether the framework of planning law as it now stands in practice is best suited to dealing with what will be a growing pressure to oppose nuclear power in itself, or at least to exact from the industry standards of safety and environmental quality that exceed those now in existence. The suggestions made in this report are designed to amend the system by which planning decisions are made in order to prepare for such a future.

The Windscale Inquiry: Technical Background

One of the main reasons for the reprocessing of spent uranium oxide fuel is that of resource conservation. The fuel is termed ‘spent’ when it has been irradiated in a reactor for up to three years and is reaching the stage of diminishing efficiency in the production of heat through the fission of atoms. If retained in the reactor after this period heat is produced less efficiently and so the fuel is removed. 97 per cent of this irradiated fuel is uranium, up to 1 per cent is plutonium and 2–3 per cent is radioactive waste (Allday, 1977). As the fuel has been enriched — i.e. it has had uranium 235 added — it contains far more U235 after irradiation in a thermal reactor than is found in natural uranium. Reprocessing frees this uranium and plutonium from other actinides and fission products so that they may be reconverted into fuel for re-use in fast reactors and, conceivably, in thermal reactors. The effect of re-using the reprocessed fuel in a thermal reactor is to enable 30–40 per cent more power to be generated from the original material. However, such fuel can only used once. On the other hand recycling this material in a fast reactor would give an energy saving 50 times greater than that elicited from a thermal reactor (Allday, 1977). Hence the uranium and plutonium in spent oxide fuel is self-evidently a valuable source of energy if it can be recovered at a cost which permits the recycled U and Pu to have a value such that their use in thermal or fast reactors would provide power at a competitive price.1

The Institutional Future

It will be apparent from the foregoing that some standing commission is required to deal with the issue of energy programme commitments, leaving ‘major’ energy investment decisions to be debated within a planning framework unless these investments are seen as implying some programme commitment. We have detailed the various bodies that might conceivably take on these roles and have argued that a standing commission is required for the wider energy debate, that a PIC is required for single ‘major’ investments with national attributes and the LPI (suitably modified) is suited to localised investments. This does not mean that other bodies have no role to play and it is vital to remember that one body, Parliament, must always be ultimately responsible for energy policy and for scrutinising major energy commitments. We would therefore see a legitimate and proper role for a Select Committee, probably the Select Committee on Science and Technology but perhaps a Select Committee on Energy, in scrutinising decisions.

UK Energy Policy

In February 1978 the Secretary of State for Energy presented his document Energy Policy (Cmnd 7101, 1978) to Parliament. Some of its contents had been released earlier under the aegis of the Energy Commission, a body composed in the main of the fuel industries’ leaders and trades unionists (see Appendix 5). The Commission had been established in 1977 and met for the first time at the end of November 1977. As a ‘consultative’ document, Energy Policy is not supposed to indicate a commitment to any specific combination of energy sources or any firm faith in a set of energy forecasts. Indeed, policy is subject to a programme of fairly continuous review from within the Department of Energy, the constituent corporate bodies in the fuel industry (British Gas Corporation, the various Electricity Boards, the National Coal Board, the Atomic Energy Authority and the British National Oil Corporation), and the Energy Commission itself. Moreover, Energy Policy stresses the need for a ‘flexible strategy’, one which can be changed to suit changed circumstances.

Efficient Decision Procedures

Anyone can make decisions. Deciding not to decide is to make a decision and so is choosing by sticking a pin in a map. But most decisions — acts of choosing something rather than something else — are made on the basis of information. In turn, that information may be limited or comprehensive, given the state of knowledge. Whatever its technical status, no decision can be held to be ‘efficient’ if it omits a major piece of information, namely, what the public wants. This type of inefficiency is a failure to honour the most elementary and fundamental feature of a democracy — that decisions should be responsive to public wants. Along with most who have attempted recently to formalise normative concepts of efficient decision procedures this underlying axiom is taken to be paramount.1 See Arrow (1963) for a general statement, and Dorfman (1973) and Haefele (1973) as examples in the field of environmental management.

Existing Advisory Institutions I

Any analysis of the ‘efficiency’ of energy decision-making in the UK must begin with a description of what institutions exist and how they relate to each other. It must also consider whether they serve, or could serve, the following functions: (i) the assessment of single investments which have ‘local’ attributes; (ii) the assessment of single investments which have ‘national’ attributes; (iii) the assessment of programmes.