With the exception of a couple of projects at Europe’s largest and most complex nuclear site, the United Kingdom’s short-term cleanup goals for radioactive waste cleanup remain largely on target, the country’s Nuclear Decommissioning Authority said in its mid-2023 fiscal year report, published Friday.
Timelines for certain cleanup projects at Sellafield Limited, a Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) subsidiary, remain “at risk,” according to the 33-page report on the six months ended Sept. 30, 2022.
For example, retrieval of the first waste from the Sellafield Pile Fuel Cladding Silo, a structure built in the early 1950s to store pieces of metal tubes used for uranium fuel rods, won’t occur this year, but is now likely three years or more down the road, according to the report.
“There are ongoing challenges due to issues with equipment performance,” according to the report. The due date is now 2026 to 2027. Another section of the report goes on to say there are problems at Pile Fuel Cladding Silo with a robot as well as the waste retrieval crane.
All spent fuels discharged from the operating Advanced Gas-Cooled Reactor power stations and defueling of all Magnox power stations reactors are sent to the Sellafield site at Cumbria, England for long-term storage, according to the report. NDA has a contract with EDF Energy to receive spent fuel from seven Advanced Gas-Cooled reactor stations.
All the fuel from the Magnox reactors, gas-cooled units which used natural uranium canned in the magnesium magnox alloy, have already been sent to Sellafield, according to the report.
Sellafield is the custodian of the majority of the UK’s inventory of separated plutonium.
