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Thorp milestone reached
Thorp has reached a significant milestone having sheared its 6,000th tonne of fuel.
Steve Cockayne, head of Thorp said: “It’s a tremendous achievement for the plant and all those who either work in Thorp or whose work supports the plant’s operation.
“We’ve overcome big challenges over the years to reach this significant milestone. We have a skilled workforce and I can confirm that the plant’s recent performance has been very promising.”
Thorp sheared its first fuel on 27 March 1994 and has since reprocessed fuel from customers from nine different countries including the UK, Germany, Japan, Italy, Switzerland, Sweden, Netherlands, Canada and Spain.
Stuart MacVean, Thorp Operations Director explained: “The NDA has recently reaffirmed their commitment to the continued operation of Thorp and that Thorp’s future is secure. The NDA has also stated that the plant’s performance is no longer under review which is a clear indication of their confidence in the plant.
“Thorp is a valuable asset and brings in significant revenue to the NDA which is used to help pay for Sellafield clean-up. We are totally committed to completing current contracted business.”
There remains a substantial quantity of fuel which Thorp must process to meet its commitments under our existing contracts. Ultimately, the total amount of fuel to be reprocessed in Thorp will be determined by the NDA's Oxide Fuel Strategies.
At present, Evaporator C is the only evaporator which can by design support Thorp reprocessing and its availability to Thorp is currently limited to a 300te campaign of fuel, due to be completed shortly.
Following completion of this Thorp will go into an engineering outage, during which inspections will be carried out on Evaporator C.
Following these inspections it is hoped that a new license will allow reprocessing of a further quantity of fuel in Thorp.
A project to construct a new Evaporator D, designed to support Thorp operations, is currently underway and will alleviate these temporary restrictions.
