In a move that overturns one of the major contractual obligations of Sellafield’s overseas reprocessing customers, the UK’s Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) has announced a deal that will see German-owned plutonium already stored at Sellafield transferred into the UK stockpile rather than being repatriated to German utilities as required under the original … [Continue Reading]
Update on NDA plans for UK plutonium re-use [No 01/12]
Though still focussed on converting UK’s stockpile of separated plutonium into Mixed Oxide (MOX) fuel – in line with the Government’s ‘preferred option’ for dealing with the material – the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) has announced that it is now also working on additional/alternative re-use options submitted to the Authority following an invitation made to … [Continue Reading]
THORP to struggle on to 2018 [No 03/11]
In its recently published paper ‘Oxide Fuels – Credible Options’, November 2011, the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) sets out options for the future operation of Sellafield’s Thermal Oxide Reprocessing Plant THORP. Opened in 1994 to reprocess UK’s domestic Advanced Gas Cooled (AGR) fuel and Light Water Reactor (LWR) fuel from overseas customers, the plant is … [Continue Reading]
Scottish & Southern Energy plc (SSE) quits NuGeneration just days after new-build consortium applies to sink exploratory boreholes at site adjacent to Sellafield [No 02/11]
Together with GDF Suez SA and Iberdrola SA, SSE was the third partner in the NuGeneration consortium planning to build new reactors on a green field site owned by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) adjacent to Sellafield. The option to develop the 190 hectare site, up to 3.6 GW capacity, was secured from the NDA … [Continue Reading]
Sellafield Emergency Exercise Postponed – wrong weather, staff too busy [No 01/11]
An on-site emergency exercise at Sellafield, scheduled for 4th November last year, was initially postponed when a real emergency unfolded in the form of a loss of coolant water to a number of Sellafield’s operating facilities when water supplies from the local lake at Wastwater were disrupted. It is not yet clear what caused the … [Continue Reading]
NDA announce Japanese MOX fuel with the Sellafield MOX Plant (SMP) [No 02/10]
Over a decade after British Nuclear Fuels plc (BNFL) had persuaded the UK Government that they should be allowed to build and operate SMP to satisfy the then currently perceived demand by Japan for Mixed Oxide (MOX) fuel, the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA who took ownership of Sellafield from BNFL in 2005) has announced that … [Continue Reading]
Safety of Sellafield’s High Level Waste (HLW) storage tanks put at risk again [No 01/10]
An investigation has been launched by Sellafield Ltd into another incident involving the loss of coolant water to the site’s HLW tanks – the second such incident within the last ten months. The loss of coolant to the tanks’ highly radioactive inventory of liquid wastes occurred on Friday 22nd January 2010 – and follows a … [Continue Reading]
Wearing thin – Sellafield’s High Level Waste (HLW) Evaporators in trouble again [No 06/09]
Sellafield Ltd has reported today that the site’s HLW waste Evaporator ‘B’ has had to be taken out of service because of yet another failure of one its internal cooling coils. Under normal circumstances, the process of evaporating the liquid HLW produced by Sellafield’s THORP and Magnox reprocessing plant would be transferred to the site’s … [Continue Reading]
As new High Level Waste (HLW) storage tanks are planned, industry regulators issue warning on other high hazard facilities at Sellafield [No 05/09]
The first vital step in combating and reducing the highest hazard area at Sellafield – the High Level Waste (HLW) storage tanks – has been put out to tender by Sellafield Ltd. Invitations to tender for the work contract, which appeared recently in the Official Journal of the European Journal (OJEU), relates to ‘the design … [Continue Reading]
Raised Gas Discharges of Antimony-125 from Sellafield’s Fuel Handling Plant force temporary closure of Magnox reprocessing [No 04/09]
Operations at Sellafield’s B205 Magnox reprocessing plant had to be put on hold in April this year because gaseous discharges from the site’s Fuel Handling Plant (FHP), where Magnox fuel is ‘de-canned’, had risen perilously close to Sellafield’s site discharge limit. B205 was closed for several weeks. FHP is the facility at Sellafield that receives … [Continue Reading]