Several customers’ fuel involved in the leak and British Nuclear Group plans to re-start THORP using just one Accountancy tank. CORE has learned that the 83 cu.m of liquor that leaked into THORP’s Feed Clarification Cell over a nine month period was comprised of dissolved fuel from Holland and Switzerland as well as from Germany … [Continue Reading]

The leakage of dissolved nuclear fuel from a pipe in Thorp’s Head-End plant was first discovered on 18th April after operators realised that a quantitiy of sheared and dissolved fuel had not ‘arrived’ at the next stage of the process – the accountancy tanks in the Feed Clarifdication cell. The cell, which forms part of … [Continue Reading]

At the local Ramsden Dock (Barrow) Liaison meeting on 28th April, the Committee was told by BNFL that the company was planning to ‘lay-up’ the European Shearwater at Barrow whilst her future is considered. With the fleet’s Pacific Crane and Pacific Swan (owned by Pacific Nuclear Transport Ltd [PNTL] of which BNFL is the major … [Continue Reading]

Just weeks after handing over the THORP reprocessing plant to the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) on 5th April 2005, BNFL has confirmed that leaking pipes in the Head-End section of the plant, where fuel is sheared and dissolved in nitric acid, is likely to keep THORP out of action ‘for weeks, if not months’. Managing … [Continue Reading]

Taking over at Sellafield on the 1st April this year, the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) will not be encouraged by the failure yet again of the Sellafield MOX Plant (SMP) to meet a production target. Neither will the NDA be pleased to discover that BNFL is having to take action against one reprocessing customer who … [Continue Reading]

At low tide, the 480 metre long section, sealed at both ends was slowly hauled down the beach and in to the Irish Sea by an off-shore tug. Under BNFL’s Sealine Recovery Project the section will remain temporarily on the sea bed prior to being cut up under water and transported via barge to the … [Continue Reading]

From a list of around thirty applicants, members of the local Labour Party have selected their new candidate to fight to retain the Copeland constituency for Labour at the forthcoming General Election. The current incumbent Dr Jack Cunningham MP who has held the local seat since 1970, had already notified his intentions to retire at … [Continue Reading]

As BNFL’s oldest nuclear cargo ship Pacific Swan left her home port of Barrow-in-Furness yesterday bound for a breakers yard at Rotterdam, details were emerging about the company’s plans to order a new ship – with the option of having a second ship built at the same time. A notice in the Europeasn Journal provides … [Continue Reading]

The nuclear industry publication ‘Nuclear Fuel’ confirms the long-suspected plan by Italy to export 235 tonnes of spent fuel to the UK for reprocessing. The lack of a national repository in Italy for these wastes, coupled with security and safety concerns about the stores in which the fuel is currently held is seen to be … [Continue Reading]

A consignment of radioactive scrap metal heading from Sellafield to a scrap metal dealer in Barrow-in-Furness had to be recalled to the site when officials at Sellafield suspected that the material might have been contaminated. The Department of Transport, the Environment Agency and the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate have been informed and an investigation into the … [Continue Reading]