Tackling challenge will remain priority ‘for decades’
The UK’s Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) group said it has delivered a UK-first nuclear safety milestone by processing a can of plutonium residue into a stable waste form for the very first time.
The NDA, a government body in charge of cleaning up the UK's earliest nuclear sites, said the breakthrough marks a significant step toward permanently disposing of the nation’s plutonium legacy.
The achievement marks the start of a programme at the NDA group’s Sellafield site to process around 400 cans of plutonium residue, a by-product from historic manufacturing processes of fuels and other materials.
The residue is processed and made ready for eventual disposal in a geological disposal facility (GDF) in a Sellafield plant that has operated safely since the mid-1980s. Adapting and repurposing existing facilities, rather than building a new one, ensures faster delivery and better value for the taxpayer, said Sellafield Ltd, which is responsible for the Sellafield site, in Cumbria, northwest England.
The full immobilisation programme will take many decades, but processing this first can of residue into a disposable form represents significant progress and was achieved within 12 months of the policy being announced, said NDA Group chief executive officer David Peattie.
He said tackling the UK’s plutonium challenge will remain a top priority for the NDA group for decades.
Building on this first success at Sellafield, the NDA group will tackle the bigger challenge of immobilising the UK’s entire civil separated plutonium inventory, having been tasked by government to do so in January 2025.
Immobilisation puts the plutonium beyond reach, addressing the long-term safety and security risks associated with it. As most of the plutonium is in a more hazardous oxide powder form and cannot be processed using existing methods, its immobilisation will require designing and proving first-of-its kind technology to lock it into a stable form for permanent disposal in a GDF, and will require a processing plant and interim storage capability to be built at Sellafield.
In August, it was announced more than £154m (€176m, $206m) would be spent by the government over five years to investigate how best to dispose of the 140 tonnes of radioactive plutonium held at Sellafield. The site has the world's largest stockpile of the material.
The UK’s inventory of civil plutonium arose from the reprocessing of spent fuel undertaken over many decades. This was the process of taking used nuclear fuel and separating it into its component parts, one of which is plutonium, which will remain radioactive and toxic for a considerable period of time.
