Sellafield nuclear reprocessing plant

However, in about 2005, operators at Sellafield nuclear reprocessing plant began to notice problems with one particular make of paperless chart recorder. They began to go to sleep or require constant re-booting. 

Johnes, S. R., Fulkner, M. J., McKeever, J. Stewert, T. H. 1991. Aspects on population exposure consequent on discharges of radionuclides to the environment from the nuclear reprocessing plant at Sellafield at Cumbria. Radiation Protection Dosimetry, 36, 199-204. 

AVH [Atelier de Vitrification de la Hague] A process for immobilizing nuclear waste, operated at La Hague, France, based on the earlier AVM process. Used also in the THORP nuclear reprocessing plant at Sellafield, UK. 

Environmental Fate. The environmental fate of americium has been extensively studied in relation to its introduction into the Irish Sea from the BNFL nuclear fuel reprocessing plant at Sellafield, United Kingdom (Belot et al. 1982 Bennett 1976 Bunzl et al. 1994, 1995 Malcolm et al. 1990 McCartney et al. 1994 McKay et al. 1994a Murray et al. 1978, 1979 Pattenden and McKay 1994 Walker et al. 1986). 

Although this has been shown to occur in experimental animals after exposure of males to foreign compounds such as cyclophosphamide, there is only inconclusive evidence that this occurs in humans. Thus, studies of exposure of human males to vinyl chloride, dibromo-chloropropane, and anesthetic gases, for example, have revealed only equivocal evidence of developmental toxicity in the offspring. There now seems to be some evidence that the leukemia occurring in children, which appears to be clustered around nuclear fuel-reprocessing plants such as Sellafield in the United Kingdom, may be due to paternal exposure to radiation. 

The seas are a source of aerosol (i.e. small particles), which transfer to the atmosphere. These will subsequently deposit, possibly after chemical modification, either back in the sea (the major part) or on land (the minor part). Marine aerosol comprises largely unfractionated seawater, but may also contain some abnormally enriched components. One example of abnormal enrichment occurs on the eastern coast of the Irish Sea. Liquid effluents from the Sellafield nuclear fuel reprocessing plant in west Cumbria are discharged into the Irish Sea by pipeline. At one time, permitted discharges were appreciable and as a result radioisotopes such as Cs and several isotopes of plutonium have accumulated in the waters and sediments of the Irish Sea. A small fraction of these radioisotopes were carried back inland in marine aerosol and deposited predominantly in the coastal zone. While the abundance of Cs in marine aerosol was refiective only of its abundance in seawater (an enrichment factor - see Chapter 4 - of close to unity), plutonium was abnormally enriched due to selective incorporation of small suspended sediment particles in the aerosol. This has manifested itself in enrichment of plutonium in soils on the west Cumbrian coast,shown as contours of 239+240p deposition (pCi cm ) to soil in Figure 3. 

British Nuclear Fuels Sellafield reprocessing plant publishes annual figures of measured discharges and local environmental measurements, in order to conform with environmental legislation (British Nuclear Fuels, 1992). The local environmental burden of anthropogenic radionuclides will be due to discharges from nuclear activities... 

There now seems to be some evidence that the leukaemia occurring in children, which appears to be clustered around nuclear fuel reprocessing plants such as Sellafield in the United Kingdom, may be due to paternal exposure to radiation. 

BNFL has significant experience in the safe operation of nuclear fuel reprocessing plants at Sellafield. 

Anglo-Irish relations have also had a nuclear power component to them. These have mainly focused on the question of radioactive discharges to the Irish Sea from the Sellafield reprocessing plant and therefore do not relate to operational reactor safety. However, the Irish government also made representations to the UK government about the decision to proceed with... 

On 20 April 2005, British Nuclear Group Sellalield Limited (BNGSL) discovered a leak from a pipe that supplied highly radioactive liquor to an accountancy tank in a part of the Thermal Oxide Reprocessing Plant (THORP) at Sellafield, known as the feed clarification cell . The incident was categorized by BNGSL as 3 on the International Nuclear Event Scale. 

For the larger oxide-fuelled PFR, collocation of the reactor and its associated fuel plants was not practicable. The larger quantities of fuel involved favoured the industrial scale involvement of British Nuclear Fuels, whose Magnox reactor fuel reprocessing plant at Sellafield would provide the initial plutonium inventory. It was, therefore, decided that the PFR oxide fuel fabrication plant would be built and operated by BNFL at Sellafield and that fuel would then be transported to Dounreay as completed assemblies ready, after inspection and adjustment of the coolant flow control gags, for irradiation. The small experimental fast reactor fuel fabrication plant was moved from Dounreay to the AEA s Windscale Laboratory, adjacent to BNFL Sellafield, to provide R D support to the main fuel fiibrication plant and to supply small batches of experimental variants for incorporation by BNFL into DMSA clusters and driver fuel assemblies. 

Flasks are lead-sealed structures designed to transport the waste and built to resist, railway, road and naval accidents. They are calculated to resist extreme situations, impacts, fires, etc. One nuclear waste reprocessing plant, at Sellafield, in Great Britain is the origin of many radioactive pollutants in its close environment. The consequences in the way of image were disastrous and the leaders from La Manche knew it well and preferred to take the initiative to change the names of their products. 

Figure 1 Temporal variations in the annual quantities of (a) Cs, (b) Am and (c) 239,discharged from the Sellafield nuclear fuel reprocessing plant (data from Gray et al ).

In 1942, the Mallinckrodt Chemical Company adapted a diethylether extraction process to purify tons of uranium for the U.S. Manhattan Project [2] later, after an explosion, the process was switched to less volatile extractants. For simultaneous large-scale recovery of the plutonium in the spent fuel elements from the production reactors at Hanford, United States, methyl isobutyl ketone (MIBK) was originally chosen as extractant/solvent in the so-called Redox solvent extraction process. In the British Windscale plant, now Sellafield, another extractant/solvent, dibutylcarbitol (DBC or Butex), was preferred for reprocessing spent nuclear reactor fuels. These early extractants have now been replaced by tributylphosphate [TBP], diluted in an aliphatic hydrocarbon or mixture of such hydrocarbons, following the discovery of Warf [9] in 1945 that TBP separates tetravalent cerium from... 

British Nuclear Fuels pic (BNFL) provide a complete nuclear fuel cycle service with its sites at Springfields (AGR/Magnox Fuel Fabrication) near Preston and Sellafield (MOX Fuel Fabrication and Reprocessing) in Cumbria. BNFL also generates electricity using Magnox Reactors at Sellafield (Calder Hall) and Chaplecross in Scotland. This paper provides an overview of the Windscale Vitrification Plant (WVP) and reviews the major safety issues associated with vitrification operations. The practicalities of vitrification of Pu using the current WVP process are briefly discussed. 

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