nuclear-news

Sellafield nuclear reprocessing to shut, but no plan for waste disposal!

and they still want to keep on making the stuff!

 the authority said it was “still many years from making final decisions on the design” of the dump and even where it would be located.

Construction on the UK’s national nuclear waste dump, to be built deep underground, is expected to start in 2075, though a location has not yet been chosen.

Controversial Thorp plant at Sellafield to be shut down, Irish Times, MARK HENNESSY, London Editor, 7 June 12, SELLAFIELD’S CONTROVERSIAL Thorp nuclear reprocessing plant is to close. The facility will be shut down in six years’ time, Britain’s Nuclear Decommissioning Authority has said.

The decision will mean that spent nuclear rods produced by the British nuclear industry after 2018 will have to be buried untreated in a temporary nuclear storage dump for up to a century.

“Our strategy to close Thorp following completion of the reprocessing contracts has potentially wider policy implications for spent fuel management in the UK,” the authority acknowledged.

Following the closure of Thorp (thermal oxide reprocessing plant), rods from the UK’s seven advanced gas-cooled reactors will be placed “in an interim store pending packaging for disposal” in a permanent waste site. However, the authority said it was “still many years from making final decisions on the design” of the dump and even where it would be
located.

The thermal oxide reprocessing plant, one of several independently
operating units at Sellafield, opened in 1994 and currently deals with
spent nuclear rods from UK gas-cooled reactors and foreign plants.

The closure decision, though not a surprise, follows a strategic
review by the authority, which outlined three options for the future
in a preliminary report last December……
Construction on the UK’s national nuclear waste dump, to be built deep underground, is expected to start in 2075, though a location has not yet been chosen.

Efforts by the US to build one at Yucca Mountain in Nevada began
decades ago but politicians there remain unsure whether it will ever
be used. The decision to close Thorp means that there is “no safety,
operational or strategic requirement to replace” tanks that currently
take the by-products from reprocessing, the nuclear authority said….
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/frontpage/2012/0608/1224317502234.html

June 8, 2012 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | UK, wastes