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UPDATED 1 Sept: The EI library in London is temporarily closed to the public, as a precautionary measure in light of the ongoing COVID-19 situation. The Knowledge Service will still be answering email queries via email , or via live chats during working hours (09:15-17:00 GMT). Our e-library is always open for members here: eLibrary , for full-text access to over 200 e-books and millions of articles. Thank you for your patience.
Sellafield
Nuclear experts at Sellafield have successfully removed one hundred tonnes of contaminated redundant equipment from the oldest fuel storage pond at Europe’s oldest and most complex nuclear site. The 60 year old pond, known as the Pile Fuel Storage Pond (PFSP), has to be emptied carefully as part of a plan to clean up and decommission the oldest nuclear facilities in the UK.
Although there remains a further 650 tonnes of contaminated metal to be retrieved from the pond, removal of the first 100 tonnes demonstrates progress on the programme to successfully decommission the facility, says Sellafield Ltd, which is decommissioning the UK’s nuclear legacy on behalf of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority. The pond was initially constructed to store fuel from the Windscale Pile reactors, whose primary focus was producing plutonium for the UK’s nuclear deterrent. The storage pond stopped receiving fuel in the 1970s.
Dorothy Gradden, Head of Programme Delivery in the PFSP, said: ‘Our nuclear forefathers developed a technology that helped the UK secure a seat at the global power table in the aftermath of the Second World War. The oldest plants at Sellafield were built in a time before computers existed and with little thought given to how they would be decommissioned. The challenge for this generation of nuclear pioneers is to safely decommission those earliest facilities as cost effectively as we can.’
News Item details
Journal title: Energy World
Countries: UK -
Subjects: Decommissioning, Nuclear fuel extraction and fuel processing, Nuclear reactors
