Nuclear power in Europe

The Thorp nuclear fuel reprocessing plant at Sellafield has restarted commercial operations three years after it was closed following a radioactive leak - a development that should ease the funding crisis at the government’s Nuclear Decommissioning Authority.

The Thermal Oxide Reprocessing Plant, or Thorp, at the nuclear complex in west Cumbria, is a large source of income for the owner NDA, which is responsible for cleaning up the UK’s nuclear reactor sites and dealing with radioactive waste. (more…)

The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority on Wednesday will appeal to industry for help in dealing with the UK’s 100-tonne stockpile of plutonium, and in deciding whether to treat it as waste or reuse it as fuel for nuclear reactors.

One option being considered is for the highly radioactive plutonium to be used to make fuel for a new nuclear reactor at Sellafield, where the plutonium is currently stored. But the question of whether the plutonium should be used or disposed of could reopen the debate on nuclear reprocessing and whether spent fuel from the next generation of nuclear reactors should be reused. (more…)

In principle, the market for selling radioactive waste management services is no different to any other business. The traditional commercial model for selling goods and services involves setting a price based on recovery of the company’s fixed costs, variable costs, and sales and marketing costs plus a profit margin. Internal or virtual markets that operate inside organisations usually work in much the same way except there are no sales and marketing costs or profit margins added. Different parts of the same organisation trade with each other on the understanding that neither will generate a profit for their particular business group – an arrangement known as inter-trading. (more…)

By Geoffrey Lean, Environment Editor - Sunday, 9 March 2008 - From Sellafield, an ordinary, unarmed ferry is to transport weapons-ready plutonium – material that could easily be used to make a ‘dirty bomb’

Weapons-ready plutonium that terrorists could easily make into a nuclear bomb is to be carried hundreds of miles down the west coast of Britain in an unarmed ship, The Independent on Sunday can reveal. (more…)

POWER companies are to be offered a new range of potential sites to construct nuclear power stations in Britain.

The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA), a government agency in charge of the £70 billion-plus clean-up of the UK atomic legacy, is expected to open talks shortly. (more…)

The complex job of cleaning up Britain’s dirtiest nuclear site is drawing some of the world’s biggest engineering companies to the poorest corner of north-west England, but local companies are wondering how they will fare in the fight for lucrative contracts.

Sellafield, in Cumbria, is the biggest prize currently available in nuclear decommissioning, with decades of work to undo the problems caused by 50 years of atomic research. (more…)

The Government is concerned that a lack of competition in the UK nuclear industry threatens to distort decision-making in the race to build a new generation of nuclear power plants.

In an interview with The Times, Malcolm Wicks, the Energy Minister, said the Government would look critically at British Energy’s ownership of eight of the most attractive UK sites for new reactors. “We want to see proper competition here,” he said. “We don’t want to see some sort of cagey deal between one company and another company . . . We have got to facilitate proper competition.” (more…)

Feb 1 2008 by Tom Simone, Daily Post

Radioactive waste – mostly caesium and cobalt, with traces of uranium – will be stored at Trawsfynydd until the government designates a national depository.

Although there are no definite plans for what to do with radioactive waste in the long term, a geological solution, where waste is buried, is favoured. (more…)

By Rebecca Bream, Utilities Correspondent
Mon Oct 22 23:06:32 EDT 2007

The Thorp nuclear fuel reprocessing plant in Sellafield is set to restart full commercial operations in the new year, almost three years after it was closed following a radioactive leak.
(more…)

The official cost of cleaning up 20 of Britain’s nuclear facilities will be more than £73bn, 16% higher than estimated last year, according to the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority yesterday. The latest rise in clean-up costs came as the government completed consultation on whether to proceed with a new generation of atomic plants, with one potential operator arguing there was a “moral imperative” to allow more to be built. (more…)