Sellafield

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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Risk of nuclear leak sparks call for installation of flood defences

Monday, February 24, 2014

Managers of a nuclear waste dump on the Cumbria coast have been ordered to start preparations to defend the site against floods and erosion, amid fears that radioactive material could one day leak into the sea.

Much of the waste buried in vaults and concrete trenches at the Low Level Waste Repository (LLWR) near the village of Drigg originates from one of the world's most contaminated nuclear sites, Sellafield, a few miles away. The waste dump is expected ultimately to require protective flood barriers.

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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 to be prosecuted for sending radioactive waste to wrong disposal site

Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Sellafield has pleaded guilty to sending several bags of radioactive waste to the wrong facility, according to the Office for Nuclear Regulation.

The nuclear power company admitted sending four bags of mixed general waste to the Lillyhall landfill site in Workington, Cumbria, in April 2010.

The bags, which contained waste such as plastic, tissues and clothing, should have gone to the low level waste repository, at Drigg.

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Sellafield poses no health risk to State, says report

Thursday, November 29, 2012

The Sellafield nuclear site on the edge of the Irish Sea in Cumbria poses no health risk to Ireland, according to a report commissioned by the Government. Even the worst-case incident such as a massive explosion would not produce “observable health effects in Ireland”, the report states.

Put together over several years by eight mostly US experts, the report was released yesterday by Minister for the Environment Phil Hogan.

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Spanish say adios to UK nuclear

Sunday, September 30, 2012

The owner of Scottish Power has pulled out of a multibillion-pound plan to build atomic reactors, dealing a blow to Britain’s faltering nuclear renaissance.

The decision by Iberdrola, the Spanish energy giant, means there is now a question mark over two of the three groups that planned plants. Ministers hoped the trio would build a dozen reactors generating roughly a fifth of Britain’s power over the next 20 years.

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Nuclear new build programme faces uncertainty

Saturday, September 22, 2012

Britain’s nuclear new build programme is facing fresh uncertainty amid fears that Cumbria county council will postpone or even reject plans to host a permanent storage facility for the country’s nuclear waste.

Local politicians have warned that the council is increasingly wary about volunteering to store hundreds of thousands of tonnes of radioactive material underground amid the rolling hills of the north-west.

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GDF Suez's nuclear reservations hit government energy policy

Monday, April 16, 2012

The government's energy policy has suffered a fresh blow when GDF Suez, the French firm behind plans to build a new nuclear plant in Cumbria, said it needed more financial incentives if it was to proceed.

Gérard Mestrallet, chairman and chief executive of GDF, said he wanted talks with the government about a fixed or minimum price for producing nuclear energy: "We are, with our partners, going to take a decision in 2015 [on building a new plant at Sellafield]. Today it is very difficult to invest in a nuclear power plant without clear visibility."

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