At a West Cumbria stakeholder working group meeting last week Sellafield Ltd outlined plans for the long-term storage of an estimated 5500 tonnes of spent fuel from the UK’s Advanced Gas Cooled Reactor fleet in THORP’s Receipt & Storage pond. The pond, measuring 73m x 23m x 8m deep, became operational in 1988 and the first spent fuel was transferred from the pond for shearing in THORP’s Head End plant for reprocessing in March 1994. As a pre-requisite to the conversion of THORP’s R&S pond to a long-term storage facility in late 2018 when all commercial reprocessing is completed, a ‘change of use’ planning application was submitted to local authority Copeland Borough Council on 28th November last year. The application was in respect not only of THORP’s R&S pond but also its smaller feed pond and the Sellafield site’s Fuel Handling Plant and AGR fuel storage pond – all being key supporting plants for whom current planning consent was based on the original intent to reprocess. A planning decision from Copeland Borough Council is expected in May 2017.
CORE 24th April 2017 read more »