Part One of Two Parts:
One of the problems I keep returning to on this blog is the failure of companies and government agencies to adhere to laws and regulations governing the proper handling of nuclear materials. This problem is widespread in the global nuclear industry. Sometimes violations are not specifically a matter of nuclear safety but a more general problem that happens to involve the handling and transfer of nuclear materials.
Last March, David Cameron, the Prime Minister of the U.K., announced at the International Nuclear Security Summit in Washington, D.C. that fifteen hundred pounds of weapons grade highly enriched uranium (HEU) from the Dounreay Nuclear Facility in Caithness was going to be flown from the John O’Groats airport at Wick, Scotland to the state of Tennessee in the U.S. One shipment took place in September of this year and more shipments are expected next year.
This HEU has been stockpiled at Dounreay for possible use in nuclear weapons. It will be received by Nuclear Fuel Services, a subsidiary of BWX Technologies in Tennessee. It has been officially reported that in return for sending the HEU to the U.S., radioactive isotopes for use in medical procedures will be sent to Europe. Critics of the shipments of HEU say that there will be little connection between receiving U.K. HEU and shipments of medical isotopes to Europe.
Critics of the shipments have pointed out that the runway at Wick is too short for the C-17 cargo planes being used to carry the uranium. They also say that the fire-fighting and rescue capabilities at Wick are insufficient to handle any major accident that may occur with the shipments.
Detailed technical reports obtained by a newspaper in Wick earlier this year indicated that the runways may not be able to safely handle the C-17s. The report said that most of the runway at Wick cannot handle the weight of the big planes and that such planes should only land at Wick in serious emergencies. The report said that cracking of the asphalt covering the runway is expected to occur when planes as heavy as the C-17s land at Wick. Such landings are referred to as "overloading" the runway.
The C-17 making the first flight from the U.S. to pick up uranium at Wick first stopped at the airport at the RAF Lossiemouth base in Moray. They speculate that during that first stop, fuel may have been drained from the plane's tanks because C-17s are too heavy to land at Wick without damaging the runway.
The authors of the report do not expect the landing of a C-17 to do permanently damage the integrity of the runway at Wick but they do recommend that the runway undergo a detailed inspection after every landing of a C-17. The report suggested that the main portion of Wick runway be upgraded before the shipments. Repairs of cracks and edges of the runway were undertaken between April and August of this year but the main part of the runway was not improved.
Please read Part Two.
Location of Wick, Scotland:
