Ever since June, the Tc-99-discharges from Sellafield have been retained and cleansed using a special cleaning technology based on chemical called tetraphenylphosphonium bromide, or TPP. The TPP mixed into Sellafield’s liquid radioactive waste stream—which is incrementally emptied into the sea thrice a year, with the goal of emptying the plant’s old storage tanks completely by 2007—has shown very promising results thus far, British Environment Agency specialist Andrew Mayall said. The British Environmental Agency is a government organisation within the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, or DEFRA.

Mayall, who is a part of the group evaluating the results, said that the technology results shown by the new technology are “promising.” This could mean the end to Tc-99 discharges for good. If that proves to be the case at the end of the testing period, it will mean an astounding break-through for Bellona. It will also be a step forward for British Nuclear Fuels, plc, or BNFL, which operates the Sellafield plant. BNFL, with Bellona, has pushed British authorities to experiment with the TPP treatment.

"The plant trial is now complete and the results are being assessed,” said Mayall. “The signs so far are promising, but the final decisions regarding the implementation of TPP to treat the remaining MAC medium active concentrate will not be made until March," Mayall told Bellona Web.

Long night’s Journey into Day
If the TPP treatment project continues as successfully as the current results suggest, it will mean the end of a long environmental battle. The British have been polluting neighbouring countries with Tc-99 discharges since 1994.

Bellona's Nils Bøhmer (left) and Erik Martiniussen present a new report on Sellafield in summer 2001. The report put the reprocessing facility on the political front burner.

Marius Engebregtsen

Ocean currents rapidly dispersed the substance over hundreds of kilometres, and as early as 1996, higher levels of the radioactive toxin were being measured in Norwegian seaweed and lobster. Norwegian egg wrack has been measured at 660 Becquerels per kilogram while dry. Despite this, the Norwegian government was sluggish to react.

Bellona adds to the pressure
Internationally, the British experienced increasing pressure to put an end to the discharges. The Irish government was enraged. Bellona and the Nordic countries took turns protesting. But the British maintained that Tc-99 was impossible to purify, and that the safest method of its disposal was to dump it into the sea.

Bellona President Frederic Haugue, dressed as Santa-Claus, takes part in an anti-Sellafield demonstration in London's Trafalgar Square, December 2001.

Nils Bøhmer / Bellona

In the spring of 2001 the British decided on a re-evaluation regarding Tc-99 discharges. By then the British Radiation Protection Authorities had made an assessment of the Sellafield discharges and proposed new limits for a number of other radioactive substances. In reaction, Bellona submitted a paper to the British Department of the Environment, which gave a thorough documentation on different ways to cleanse the Tc-99, one of them by blending TPP into the entire waste stream that is discharged from the plant.

During the summer of 2001 Bellona also published a working paper on Sellafield. The document was rich in illustrations and presented in both Norwegian and English.

A British response to the working paper was not forthcoming, despite additional pressure from Norway. Bellona therefore decided to make use of unorthodox means to make its point. In March 2003 Bellona organized a conference at the Sellafield-plant, together with another Norwegian NGO, “Lofoten mot Sellafield,” and the owner of the plant, BNFL.

Mayall was among the participants, as were British and Norwegian radiation protection authorities.

During the conference Bellona presented concrete proposals on how to introduce a test ban of the controversial Tc-99 discharges. Norway’s secretary of state for the environment, Børge Brende, who participated in the conference, took the proposal to his British colleagues.

Until this ad-hoc conference, the British had continued to argue that it was impossible to clear out Tc-99 from its thrice-yearly drainages of the waste tank.

The turning point came two months after the Bellona conference. In accordance with Bellona’s demands, a temporarily test ban was introduced and the new TPP technology has been in test mode for the past autumn.

Norwegian Minister of the Environment Børge Brende met his British counterpart during the OSPAR conference in Bremen this autumn.

Erik Martiniussen/ Bellona

British and Norwegian radiation protection authorities will be present at the conference, as will British and Norwegian politicians. BNFL is also invited to attend.

The burning question has been whether it would be possible to store the radioactive Tc-99 on land. For years, the thrust of British inaction was that this could not be done. If one were to succeed in this endeavour—through the TPP experiment, for instance—NIREX, a British radioactive waste firm, would be given the responsibility of the waste’s future storage. NIREX will also attend the February conference to discuss how this can be carried out.

Bellona has also updated its 2001 working paper on Sellafield. The document has been expanded into a wider-ranging report that shows an even clearer picture of the challenges left by British nuclear energy research. It contains, for example, new information about the radioactively contaminated sediments off Sellafield’s coast. An English translation will be available by the time of the February conference, and Bellona will present the new information to the British public.