More than ten years later than originally scheduled, the first shipment of vitrified High Level Waste (HLW) is expected to be shipped from Sellafield to Japan early in 2010.
Sellafield Ltd said yesterday that the first HLW return shipment to Japan was expected to be completed by next in March. Depending on which of three recognised sea routes was selected, the return could take up to 6 weeks – indicating a departure from the UK sometime in January 2010. It is likely that the HLW, loaded into transport containers, will be sent from Sellafield to Barrow docks by rail and loaded onto the Pacific Sandpiper for the 25,000km voyage to Japan.
Contrary to local media reports (Whitehaven News 26th November) that the shipment would be made on a vessel fitted with naval canon, the industry has confirmed today that there is no plan to use an armed ship. Of the three current nuclear ships operated by Pacific Nuclear Transport Ltd (PNTL), the 4000-ton Pacific Sandpiper built in 1985 is the only ship of the fleet not fitted with the naval canon or extra accommodation for a security crew that is required for ships carrying plutonium or MOX fuel. As the oldest ship in the PNTL fleet, the ship is approaching retirement after 25 years service. Her replacement is already under construction in a Japanese yard. PNTL is a subsidiary company of International Nuclear Services (INS), a commercial arm of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA).
Once converted to a solid glass form at Sellafield’s Vitrification plant, the vitrified HLW is held in stainless steel ‘canisters’. Approximately 1000 such canisters are due to be returned to Japan over the next ten years. Weighing some 500kg each, 28 canisters will be loaded into 98-ton TN 28 VT transport flasks at Sellafield’s Residue Export Facility (REF) prior to delivery by rail to Barrow docks for export. With one return shipment per year expected to be made, up to 4 transport flasks could be loaded onto the Pacific Sandpiper or her successor for each annual voyage.
The upcoming shipment will be the first repatriation of any category of foreign waste to overseas customers – despite Japanese and other wastes having been produced for more than thirty years by the reprocessing of Japanese spent fuel at Sellafield’s Magnox and THORP plant. Whilst overseas reprocessing contracts signed after 1976 required customers to take back all reprocessing wastes, a system of ‘waste substitution’ was agreed between Government, Sellafield and customers in 2004 whereby only HLW would be returned – leaving the significantly larger volumes of Intermediate and Low level wastes to be disposed of in the UK.
To compensate for the amount of radioactivity in those wastes that will remain in the UK, a ‘radiological equivalance’ will be returned to overseas customers in the form of additional HLW. For Japan, whose utilities will receive around 850 canisters of HLW directly resulting from their reprocessing contracts, the equivalence amounts to an extra 150 canisters, making 1000 in total. Sellafield owners NDA have said that an overall total of 1850 HLW canisters are due to be repatriated to Japanese and European customers over the coming years. INS has confirmed that following the first return to Japan, the next HLW shipment will be to the Netherlands.