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44 years of discharges prevented after early end to Sellafield waste programme
British Nuclear Group, the nuclear site management, decommissioning and clean-up specialist, this week completed the clean-up of historic liquid waste from one of the oldest plants at Sellafield, while preventing more than 44 years of radioactive discharges to sea and saving taxpayers up to £300m in potential new building costs.
The liquid waste known as medium active concentrate (MAC), which is a by-product of spent Magnox fuel reprocessing, has been stored at a facility called the Medium Active Tank Farm (MATF) at Sellafield since the early 1980s.
With the increasing age of the MATF facility, a need developed to transfer and process its MAC inventory before new storage facilities were required. However, due to limits on sea discharges of the radioactive isotope Technetium (Tc-99), which was present in MAC and originally could not be removed, the speed of processing was restricted.
However, this all changed thanks to a unique process developed at Sellafield, which used a chemical known as TPP to separate Tc-99 from the historic MAC so it could be encapsulated in cement and stored safely on site. In addition, all current and future arisings of MAC were diverted to an alternative plant at Sellafield where waste could be melted into glass for safe storage, a process called vitrification.
These breakthroughs allowed a massive acceleration in the MAC processing programme and led to an 87 per cent reduction in the radioactive inventory at the MATF and the prevention of more than 44 years-worth of Tc-99 discharges at proposed new discharge limits.
The transfer of all historic MAC was completed 18 months ahead of schedule, and together with the diversion of current liquid waste arising from Magnox reprocessing, negated the potential need for a new storage facility to be built and saving the UK taxpayer about £300m.
John Storer, British Nuclear Group’s director of production operations, said: “Cleaning up the historic MAC inventory at Sellafield indicates a significant reduction in the radioactive hazard on site and the way in which British Nuclear Group has achieved it demonstrates a commitment to providing value through innovation, and also its dedication to minimising environmental impact.”
The creation of the separation process using the chemical TPP came in response to concerns raised by the Irish, Icelandic and Norwegian governments about the impact of trace quantities of Tc-99 being found in their coastal waters.
After the commencement of the Tc-99 removal process, one of the most vocal critics of the sea discharges, the Liberal Party from Norway’s coastal Rogaland region, awarded the UK environment minister its annual environmental award.
