ScribbleLive

@lillymunster Have you covered the Yucatan Mountain issue and the Finnish, Swedish, Spanish and British proposals for nuclear waste disposal and safe keeping mentioned in a CNN article posted here by Peter and myself?

debate on propsals for storage in Cumbria: www.timesandstar.co.uk

The taxpayer will have to stump up almost £250m more to bail out the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority in the next financial year after falling asset sales and rising expenditure cut its income by 17.5%.

The shortfall is revealed in the NDA's just-published draft business plan for 2012-15, which shows the impact of being unable to offload land to the private sector for new nuclear plants and the end of the contracts to supply Japan with mixed-oxide fuel.

The setback will give more ammunition to environmentalists and other critics who argue that the wider nuclear industry is infamous for cost overruns and calls on public funds.
www.guardian.co.uk

The Government gave the go-ahead yesterday (1st DEc 2011) for a controversial proposal to convert Britain's plutonium waste into mixed oxide (Mox) nuclear fuel that could be "burned" in a new generation of nuclear power plants.

The decision, which ends decades of uncertainty on how to deal with a growing stockpile of more than 112 tonnes of plutonium waste, was presented as a written Parliamentary statement by the energy minister, Charles Hendry. www.independent.co.uk

@lillymunster yes -it's not just the money they've spent, it's also the UK has such huge stockpiles - much accepted from other countries - & something has to be done

WEbsdite for the Committee on Radioactie Waste Management - a reputedly independent advisory body for Government

Fast breeder reactors can be a short term solution for existing nuclear waste but they would only perpetuate the nuclear power industry for another 5 or 6 decades. The question is, are we willing to let that happen?

The first shipment of highly radioactive waste from the UK has left the Sellafield nuclear site, the BBC has learnt.

It has been loaded onto a ship specifically designed to carry nuclear waste that will sail for Japan later.

The waste is a by-product of nuclear fuel spent by Japanese reactors that was sent to the UK for reprocessing during the 1980s and 1990s.

Some campaigners have criticised the shipments, saying they are dangerous.

"It is highly irresponsible for the industry to still be sending this kind of material across the world," said anti-nuclear campaigner Martin Forward.






EYEWITNESS



Jorn Madslien, business reporter, Sellafield


Standing next to a 113-tonne metal cylinder filled to the brim with highly radioactive waste is a good way to get the heart racing - especially when that cylinder is dangling mid-air from a moving crane.

But the small group of workers at the Sellafield nuclear complex remain calm during the careful loading of the first ever high-level nuclear waste shipment set to leave the UK.

But if the workers are cool, their cargo is hot. The flask, which is being shipped to Japan, contains 28 steel canisters filled with high-level nuclear waste, each emitting heat.

As I brush against the steel surface, I can feel a warm breeze of air coming from the shiny metal.

Following the journey of the waste



But Sellafield spokesman Mike Johnson said the site was simply fulfilling its contractual obligations, and government policy, in transporting the waste safely.

Only two countries, the UK and France, have been engaged in the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel from power stations.

The process involves extracting reusable uranium and plutonium from the fuel, leaving behind a liquid waste.

Japan has storage facilities in place already, having received 12 shipments of high level nuclear waste from France in recent years.

Over the next decade, high-level waste will also be returned to European countries.

Returning waste to countries that have benefited from nuclear energy production is in line with both global agreements and UK government policy.

Profitable shipment

For Sellafield, it is also a source of revenue, as the company - which runs the site under a contract with the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority - is being paid by the government for meeting targets set as part of a complex contract that involves the decommissioning, reprocessing and waste management at the site.

"This is a performance-based milestone," Mike Johnson, executive director of Sellafield's waste and effluent disposal, told BBC News. "This is one of the ways we earn our fees."

Sellafield declined to reveal the payment details.

Revenue loss

Sellafield's high-level nuclear waste storage is one of the most concentrated sources of radioactivity anywhere in the world
news.bbc.co.uk

Nuclear waste repository meeting discusses geology
www.westcumbriamrws.org.uk

@lillymunster lol:-)