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…)

TAIPEI - Taiwan is mulling transporting its nuclear waste to France for reprocessing as two of the island’s radioactive waste storage sites will reach capacity by 2011, a report said Sunday.

State-run Taiwan Power Company (Taipower) last year applied to expand the storage facilities but has so far not received approval from the Atomic Energy Council over environmental impact considerations, the China Times said. (more…)

20 December 2007

On 17 December the first transport to France of irradiated fuel still present in Italy was completed. The first two special containers, with 34 of the 1243 fuel rods that will be reprocessed at La Hague, left the shut down Caorso nuclear power plant. (more…)

Mon Oct 29, 2007 1:27pm EDT

By Natalya Shurmina

YEKATERINBURG, Russia (Reuters) - Safety breaches have caused a radiation leak at a major nuclear reprocessing plant in the Ural mountains, Russia announced on Monday, but officials said there was no danger to humans.

Local Emergencies Ministry officials said a faulty tap allowed radiation to leak from a tank holding liquid radioactive waste onto 1.5 km (just under a mile) of a road at the Mayak plant. The incident happened four days ago. (more…)

By Galina Stolyarova

Staff Writer

Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times An ecological demonstrator is carried away by a policeman as a protest on St. Isaac’s Square, in front of the Legislative Assembly building, was broken up on Thursday.

The police on Thursday disrupted an environmental picket outside the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly, detaining more than 10 activists from local and international ecological groups campaigning against the import of spent nuclear fuel and depleted uranium hexafluoride. The picket was held in the wake of a hefty cargo of depleted uranium arriving in the city. (more…)

Spent nuclear fuel is now being widely referred to as ‘used’ nuclear fuel and reprocessing is fast becoming ‘recycling’. Before long, those countries that ‘recycle’ their ‘used’ nuclear fuel will claim that nuclear power is a renewable source of energy.
(more…)