NDA

UK nuclear clean-up bill rises by £6.6bn

Monday, June 23, 2014

The bill faced by taxpayers for the clean-up of Sellafield and Britain’s other nuclear sites will be £6.6bn more than previously thought, in a sign of the challenges the country faces in dealing with its atomic legacy.

The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority said it had raised its best estimate for the undiscounted cost of the clean-up over the next 120 years to £110bn, a 7 per cent increase, with Sellafield alone accounting for £79.1bn of that. It also raised its total discounted estimate of the costs by 10 per cent to £64.9bn.

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A glowing review

Sunday, April 6, 2014

Nuclear decommissioning: Britain is paying dearly for neglecting its nuclear waste

SWILLING around murky ponds in the oldest part of Sellafield, a nuclear research and reprocessing centre in Cumbria, is a soupy, radioactive sludge. For years boffins working on Britain’s first military and civil nuclear programmes abandoned spent fuel and other nastiness into the pools and tanks, which now grow decrepit. Though perhaps not the “slow-motion Chernobyl” which some environmental campaigners make out, the site is subject to one of the most complex nuclear clean-ups in the world.

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Full probe call after nuclear train derails in Barrow

Thursday, October 10, 2013

INVESTIGATIONS have been launched to determine how a train carrying nuclear flasks derailed between Roose and Barrow stations.

Emergency crews raced to the scene, just behind Salthouse Road, Barrow, at about 2.15pm yesterday and St Luke’s Avenue was cordoned off.

A spokesman from International Nuclear Services Ltd, a subsidiary of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, which is responsible for the management and transport of nuclear material, said the train had been on the way to Sellafield carrying empty flasks when it derailed while travelling at approximately 5mph.

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Move to deal with deadly legacy of nuclear power plants

Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Britain is set to tackle a 60-year-old problem that has dogged successive governments: how to resolve the deadly legacy from the country's first generation of nuclear power plants.

The UK is home to the world's largest stockpile of plutonium, with more than 100 tonnes of the highly radioactive material.

The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, whose job it is to look after the plutonium, is preparing to give its recommendation on how the government should deal with the problem, with an announcement expected as early as next month.

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Sellafield Mox nuclear fuel plant to close

Monday, August 22, 2011

The Mox nuclear fuel plant at Sellafield was closed on Wednesday, with the loss of around 600 jobs.

The closure is a consequence of the Fukushima incident in Japan in March, which has closed down much of the nuclear industry there and led to a rethink of nuclear power around the world. But the government said the move had "no implications" for the UK's plans for new nuclear reactors.

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British Energy says August nuclear output up 3% on month

Thursday, September 2, 2010

British Energy said Wednesday that output from its 15 nuclear reactors reached 3.5 TWh in August, up 3% from July, following the restart of the UK generator's Dungeness B-21 reactor on August 19.

The 550 MW Dungeness B-21 unit in Kent generated power for the first time in a year in August, following an extended outage to repair a pipe adjacent to a boiler reheater.

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EnergySolutions to Continue Magnox Cleanup

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Today, the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) in the United Kingdom announced that the competition for the new contract for the cleanup of the Magnox reactor sites will commence in 2011. Award of the contract is expected by the end of 2012. EnergySolutions will continue to lead this important cleanup project during this time period and it will bid on the new contract.
The NDA stated that it would select a single operator for Magnox North Limited, Magnox South Limited and Research Sites Restoration Limited.

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Dounreay training team sets up off site

Sunday, November 16, 2008

DOUNREAY'S training and development team has become the first of its potential spin-out businesses to move off the site.

The 12-strong group has relocated to Naver Business Centre in Thurso where there are better prospects for growth.

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Limits to growth

Friday, November 7, 2008

A new generation of nuclear plants requires a new generation of nuclear physicists

MUCH more than worries about safety, the biggest obstacle to the revival of nuclear power in Britain is cost. Atom-splitting is expensive, with brochure prices for reactors starting around £3 billion, and dizzying lurches in oil prices make it hard to evaluate the industry’s competitiveness. “Nuclear power works for oil prices above $60 a barrel,” said a government adviser confidently in early October, when it was still near $100. As The Economist went to press, the price of oil was hovering around $64, barely above that margin of safety.

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UK's nuclear agency hopes to extend life at Oldbury plant

Thursday, November 6, 2008

The UK's Nuclear Decommissioning Authority has formally advised the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate - the country's nuclear safety regulator - that it plans to extend the operating life at Oldbury nuclear power station, the NDA said Wednesday.

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