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Conditions had changed and any need for it had long disappeared. But ministers still allowed it to start up.They did so on the basis of a much-quoted report on its economic justification by the accountancy firm Touche Ross All attempts to get the report made public failed. Then it transpired, four years later, that the report had never actually existed.The Labour government came to power pledged to hold an inquiry into the plant. But, once in Downing Street, Tony Blair blocked it.Now it seems that its death-defying feats may finally be coming to an end. It was 30 years ago that I first came across Thorp, then merely a plan for a new plant at what was to become the highly controversial Sellafield nuclear complex. For the past three decades I have watched in growing bewilderment as time and time again it has apparently defied the law of gravity. It pulled off its first escapologist's stunt when it survived what was then Britain's longest public inquiry in 1977. By common consent, the environmental groups, such as Friends of the Earth, that were arguing for a 10-year delay before any decision was taken to build it, won the arguments hands down, but the plant was still approved.They still won a moral victory, for it was a decade before the plant was actually constructed.
This was an even dodgier proposition, and has proved to be an even greater disaster: the fuel is much more expensive than ordinary nuclear fuel; the plant's economics are appalling; it works even less well than Thorp; and it vastly increases the danger of proliferation and nuclear terrorism by causing plutonium to be transported around the world.Enough is enough. The time has come to close Thorp or, rather, not to reopen it after the accident. Even much of the nuclear industry would heave a huge sigh of relief. To mix wildlife metaphors, the white elephant has long been an albatross around its neck, costing it money and attracting public opprobrium by its appalling performance and negligent management.
Everyone agrees that the next generation of nuclear reactors - should there be one, and we retain an open mind on their desirability - will not use reprocessing. This is a technology whose time has not so much passed, as has never come, and never will This leak should be Thorp's last.. And, last but not least, Thorp did not even work properly.Nearly 30 years ago, the United States saw the radioactive writing on the wall and abandoned reprocessing. The British nuclear establishment - and the Department of Trade and Industry, which owns Sellafield - pressed stubbornly on. As it became ever clearer that Thorp was a white elephant, their response was to build it a mate - a plant to make so-called "Mox" fuel out of the uranium and plutonium it produced. Uranium remained plentiful, and the world became awash with unwanted plutonium from decommissioned weapons and reprocessing plants.
