Stakeholders in the United Kingdom have another 11 weeks to provide input on the latest version of the strategic plan for cleanup of nuclear sites managed by the government’s Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA).
The agency on Aug. 17 issued the fourth iteration of its draft strategy, starting the clock on a 12-week comment period. The documents are published every five years and cover no less than a century of anticipated operations across the NDA’s 17 nuclear properties.
Planned milestones along the way include completion of reprocessing all Magnox fuel this year, retrieving all legacy waste in 2046, treating and disposing of all intermediate-level waste by 2120, and decommissioning all buildings by 2125. Two centuries past that, in 2333, the NDA anticipates that all land at Scottish sites will be dedesignated.
The strategy covers operations in decommissioning and site remediation, spent fuels, nuclear materials, and integrated waste management, along with “critical enablers” such as security and cybersecurity.
In the plan, the NDA acknowledged the potential impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Whilst the acute phase has been effectively managed by the NDA group, with minimum staffing levels achieved to maintain nuclear safety, the longer-term consequences are far from clear,” the agency stated. “At this stage, there is no definitive understanding of the long-term integrity of our delivery plans and the future decisions that will need to be made, or when.”
The 15-year-old nondepartmental agency has been funded at over £3 billion annually since the government’s 2012-2013 fiscal year. The NDA uses site license companies to manage its facilities, and in recent years has moved to shift them to its ownership rather than using hired contractors. In July, the agency said the entities that manage the U.K.’s low-level radioactive waste repository and decommissioning of the Dounreay fast-reactor sites in Scotland would become wholly owned NDA subsidiaries in 2021.
The last day for comments is Nov. 8. Comments can be submitted by email, to [email protected]; or by mail, to Strategy Consultation, Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, Herdus House, Westlakes Science and Technology Park, Moor Row, Cumbria CA24 3HU. Input will be used to develop the final version of the strategy, which is due for publication by March 31, 2021.
