UK Nuclear Fuel Plant to Close Amid Japan's Turmoil

NewScientist.com - August 3, 2011

Sellafield nuclear plant (Pic: Getty)

Paul Marks, senior technology correspondent

The 11 March earthquake and tsunami that crippled Japan's nuclear industry has claimed a commercial victim thousands of miles away: the Sellafield Mixed Oxide (MOX) plant in Cumbria, UK, is to close "at the earliest practical opportunity" the UK Nuclear Decommissioning Authority announced today.

The plant's only customer was the vastly-troubled Japanese nuclear industry, currently embroiled in a programme of plant shutdowns as the scale of the seismic menace some of its power stations face comes into sharper relief. A Sellafield spokesman said plans to close one plant in particular, at Hamaoka, was instrumental in sealing the MOX plant's fate.

Situated on the coast some 200 kilometres south of Tokyo, the Hamaoka nuclear power plant straddles two major geological faults and has been described by seismologist Katsuhiko Ishibashi at Kobe University as a "kamikaze terrorist waiting to explode".

In May, wary of the risk of a magnitude 8 quake in the next 30 years, the government ordered it to close for an indeterminate period while a massive sea wall is built. The NDA said it is unwilling to burden the UK taxpayer with the costs of running the MOX plant when it has no foreseeable chance of making any nuclear fuel sales any time soon.

However, the MOX plant is small part of the Sellafield site - the sprawling complex employs some 10,000 people in the Magnox and Thermal Oxide reprocessing plants. They perform a raft of decommissioning operations, including the handling and storage of various grades of nuclear waste - some of it awaiting a future deep geological disposal site.

Sellafield's operators and the NDA hope some of the 600 staff at the MOX plant can be redeployed in future decommissioning operations.

http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2011/08/sellafields-mox-plant-falls-vi.html