From the New Scientist 21 January 2015
Huge pools of mystery sludge, leaking silos and risk of explosions: Sellafield needs help, but the UK government has just sacked the firm running the clean-up
Urgent clean-up of two of the world's most dangerous radioactive waste stores will be delayed by at least five years, despite growing safety fears.
The waste is stored at the UK's Sellafield nuclear reprocessing site, which holds radioactive waste dating back to the dawn of the nuclear age. An accident at the derelict site could release radioactive materials into the air over the UK and beyond.
Last week, the UK government sacked the private consortium running the £80-billion-programme to clean up Sellafield, and gave the job back to its own agency, the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA). The clean-up operation, scheduled to end by 2120, costs the government £1.9 billion a year.
The private consortium, Nuclear Management Partners, was meant to "bring in world-class expertise" and allow the government to "get to grips with the legacy after decades of inaction", according to a 2008 statement by Mike O'Brien, energy minister at the time. But six years on, the privatisation experiment has been abandoned.
The surprise renationalisation comes after delays at two of the four waste stores prioritised for clean-up. The four ponds and silos contain hundreds of tonnes of highly radioactive material from more than 60 years of operations. The decaying structures are cracking, leaking waste into the soil, and are at risk of explosions from gases created by corrosion.
...
And the problem is just going to get worse. When plants are decommissioned in the future, waste will still be sent to Sellafield. The UK's plants are mostly made of concrete, rather than steel, which makes them harder to dismantle, says Timothy Abram at the University of Manchester. It also means they create about 30 times more radioactive material. And with a new nuclear plant about to be built at Hinkley Point in Somerset, the amount of radioactive waste headed for Sellafield may grow.
Another unique legacy is the 90,000 tonnes of radioactive graphite stored there, used as fuel cladding. Irradiated graphite accumulates energy known as Wigner energy, which caused the UK's worst nuclear accident in 1957. Researchers are still unsure how to make it safe for disposal.
While other Western nations have policies for dismantling old nuclear plants as soon as they can, the UK plans to mothball them for a century or more first. Nobody wants more radioactive waste until they have cleaned up what is already there.
Read full story at – Shocking state of world's riskiest nuclear waste site
Huge pools of mystery sludge, leaking silos and risk of explosions: Sellafield needs help, but the UK government has just sacked the firm running the clean-up
Urgent clean-up of two of the world's most dangerous radioactive waste stores will be delayed by at least five years, despite growing safety fears.
The waste is stored at the UK's Sellafield nuclear reprocessing site, which holds radioactive waste dating back to the dawn of the nuclear age. An accident at the derelict site could release radioactive materials into the air over the UK and beyond.
Last week, the UK government sacked the private consortium running the £80-billion-programme to clean up Sellafield, and gave the job back to its own agency, the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA). The clean-up operation, scheduled to end by 2120, costs the government £1.9 billion a year.
The private consortium, Nuclear Management Partners, was meant to "bring in world-class expertise" and allow the government to "get to grips with the legacy after decades of inaction", according to a 2008 statement by Mike O'Brien, energy minister at the time. But six years on, the privatisation experiment has been abandoned.
The surprise renationalisation comes after delays at two of the four waste stores prioritised for clean-up. The four ponds and silos contain hundreds of tonnes of highly radioactive material from more than 60 years of operations. The decaying structures are cracking, leaking waste into the soil, and are at risk of explosions from gases created by corrosion.
...
And the problem is just going to get worse. When plants are decommissioned in the future, waste will still be sent to Sellafield. The UK's plants are mostly made of concrete, rather than steel, which makes them harder to dismantle, says Timothy Abram at the University of Manchester. It also means they create about 30 times more radioactive material. And with a new nuclear plant about to be built at Hinkley Point in Somerset, the amount of radioactive waste headed for Sellafield may grow.
Another unique legacy is the 90,000 tonnes of radioactive graphite stored there, used as fuel cladding. Irradiated graphite accumulates energy known as Wigner energy, which caused the UK's worst nuclear accident in 1957. Researchers are still unsure how to make it safe for disposal.
While other Western nations have policies for dismantling old nuclear plants as soon as they can, the UK plans to mothball them for a century or more first. Nobody wants more radioactive waste until they have cleaned up what is already there.
Read full story at – Shocking state of world's riskiest nuclear waste site
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