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Reprocessing
Sellafield MOX plant to close
Some very good news to come out of Cumbria in the wake of the Fukushima disaster. Sellafield will close their highly contested MOX plant. A very long, and bitter, battle will finally end in a quiet success. The cracks are widening in the nuclear fuel cyle. The diry underside has been exposed and people are starting to realize the true cost they are paying. SMP may be disapointed in the loss of 600 jobs, but shutting down Sellafield's MOX plant will save many more lives in the long run. The nuclear dominos are beginning to fall. May this be one of many.
Business Green l Jessica Shankleman 3 August, 2011
The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) is to close its Sellafield mixed oxide fuel plant (SMP) in Cumbria because of the disaster at Japan'sFukushima nuclear plant in March.
The NDA announced today that it will close the plant, which employs 600 people and processes plutonium into reusable fuel "at the earliest opportunity".
NDA spokesman Bill Hamilton toldBusinessGreen that SMP's only customers were Japanese developers, many of which face uncertainty as a result of the disaster in March.
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Sellafield activity 'will ensure UK breaks nuclear pollution promise'
Britain ramps up reprocessing at Sellafield, which looks to double the discharges of radioactive waste into the Irish Sea.
There is no excuse for reprocessing. It is wasteful, expensive, inefficient as a form of fuel production, and extremely dangerous. Dumping yet more plutonium, caesium-137, and cobalt-60 into the Irish Sea puts Britain in violation of "its commitment to "progressive and substantial reductions of discharges" under the Oslo-Paris (Ospar) convention," according to a report by Cumbrians Opposed to a Radioactive Environment (Core).
guardian.co.uk l Rob Edwards 17 February 2011
Britain is on course to break an international agreement to reduce radioactive pollution of the seas, because of an increase in activity at the Sellafield nuclear site, according to a report from a campaign group that monitors the plant.
Discharges of radioactive waste into the Irish Sea from the nuclear fuel reprocessing plants at Sellafield, Cumbria, are set to double over the next few years because of a "crash programme" of reprocessing planned by the government's Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA).
Critics say this would put the government in breach of its commitment to "progressive and substantial reductions of discharges" under the Oslo-Paris (Ospar) convention, which seeks to limit pollution of the north-east Atlantic. The convention's agreed aim is to bring levels of artificial radioactivity in the environment down to "close to zero" by 2020.
