United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority

The United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority ( UKAEA ) is a British organization that deals with the use of nuclear energy . The originally purely state institution has been partially privatized in recent years.

UKAEA, based in Abingdon-on-Thames , was founded in 1954 and was the pioneer in the development of nuclear energy in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland . Today the main task is the decommissioning of the older nuclear power plants and radioactive facilities under the supervision of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority , which had been used for the UK research and development programs. A pilot project to demonstrate the feasibility of decommissioning is the EU financially supported dismantling of the Windscale Advanced Gas-cooled Reactor (WAGR) , which went into operation in 1962.

Systems and facilities operated by UKAEA are located at the following locations:

• Dounreay
• Windscale
• Risley
• Harwell
• Culham
• Winfrith

The UKAEA is also responsible for the UK's contribution to the European fusion research program . Corresponding experiments on the Joint European Torus (JET) and Mega-Ampere Spherical Tokamak (MAST) are being carried out in the Culham Science Center.

Web links

• Homepage (English)

See also

• Nuclear Installations Inspectorate (NII);
• Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA), UK decommissioning and dismantling authority