Sellafield MOX Plant

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The Sellafield MOX Plant (abbreviated: SMP ) is a nuclear facility in Great Britain , in which plutonium-containing fuel elements ( MOX fuel elements ) for light water reactors of foreign customers are produced. The facility is operated by Sellafield Ltd (SLC), a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Nuclear Management Partners consortium , on behalf of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA). It is located on the site of the Sellafield Nuclear Center in Cumbria on the west coast of England .

Head area of ​​a fuel assembly. Detail left: uranium tablets ( pellets ) in the fuel rods

Production process

The heart of the manufacturing process is the UK-developed type of powder manufacturing known as the “Short Binderless Route”. The fissile plutonium - similar to uranium-235 in conventional UO 2 fuel - is homogeneously distributed in the pellet on a microscopic scale. Most of the plutonium dioxide comes from the THORP plant, which is also located in Sellafield , but provisions have also been made to process plutonium from the Magnox B205 reprocessing plant or material provided by customers themselves. The uranium dioxide, mainly depleted tails, comes from Springfields . Also reprocessed uranium (WAU) can be processed.

history

Uranium was processed for the first time in June 1999 . In the second half of 2002, bar production began, and at the beginning of 2003, assembly began. The approved production capacity is 120 tons of heavy metal per year. However, this value seemed utopian. The NDA calculated that a final capacity of 40 tSM / a can be achieved. In June 2005, four MOX fuel elements produced on a commercial basis were delivered to a customer ( Beznau nuclear power plant ) for the first time. In April and November 2006, four more fuel assemblies were delivered for Beznau.

In August 2011 the British government announced that it would close this part of the nuclear facility (as soon as possible); most recently, orders were carried out exclusively for customers from Japan. As a precautionary measure, all German customers have started talks with the French company AREVA about the possibility of purchasing MOX fuel elements.

The future of the underutilized facility seemed uncertain for a long time. According to British media, the plant has devoured more than £ 1 billion in taxpayers' money since it opened in 2001. Because of the immense costs, Michael Meacher , British Environment Secretary from 1997 to 2003 , requested the country's Supreme Audit Office to conduct an official investigation, which did not take place.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Answer 17/7137 of September 23, 2011 (PDF; 168 kB) bundestag.de, accessed on July 2, 2012 .
  2. ↑ British shut down part of the Sellafield reprocessing plant. FAZ, August 4, 2011, accessed on August 7, 2011 .
  3. ↑ Close the processing plant in Sellafield. (No longer available online.) Rp-online.de, August 4, 2011, formerly in the original ; Retrieved August 9, 2011 .  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.rp-online.de  
  4. ↑ press release. bundestag.de, archived from the original on November 7, 2011 ; Retrieved July 2, 2012 .
  5. ↑

    "The future of the underperforming fuel facility has long been uncertain, but improvements in output under new management regime appear to have made the difference. The NDA said that it talked with the ten Japanese nuclear utilities "to aim to convert all their plutonium recovered in the UK into MOX fuel." After work by the NDA's commercial subsidiary, International Nuclear Services, new arrangements are in place that the NDA said "make the continuing operation of the plant economically acceptable in the longer term." Business planning manager John Clarke added that, "Agreement has now been reached between the NDA and Japanese utilities on an overall framework for future fabrication of MOX fuel in SMP."

    From: Japanese firms stick with Sellafield MOX Plan. world-nuclear-news.org, May 13, 2010, archived from the original on May 17, 2010 ; Retrieved May 13, 2010 .
  6. ↑ A £ 1bn nuclear white elephant. The Independent , April 7, 2009, accessed April 14, 2009 .

Coordinates: 54 ° 25 ′ 1 ″  N , 3 ° 30 ′ 6 ″  W.