By Rebecca Bream, Utilities Correspondent
Mon Oct 22 23:06:32 EDT 2007
The Thorp nuclear fuel reprocessing plant in Sellafield is set to restart full commercial operations in the new year, almost three years after it was closed following a radioactive leak.
AN Italian and a British company are the last in the running to buy Project Services, BNFL’s specialist nuclear-decommission-ing division.
Italy’s Finmeccanica and Britain’s VT Group will this week submit their final bids.
BNFL, a state-owned nuclear agency, is being broken up. Over the past 18 months it has sold Westinghouse, the power-station builder, and Reactor Sites Management, which operates nuclear plants in Britain.
London (Platts)–24Aug2007The UK’s Oldbury-2 magnox reconnected to the grid August 23, operatorMagnox North said August 24. A fire and then turbine vibrations kept thereactor offline most of the time since May 30. Oldbury-2, one of the fourremaining operating magnox reactors, underwent a 23-month outage until May 27to determine the extent of graphite depletion in its core. It operated onlythree days before a May 30 fire on the non-nuclear side of the plant forcedits shutdown.
Italy is hoping to export 99% of its nuclear waste to the UK after public demonstrations made it impossible to find a suitable site on Italian soil.
The Italian government has 235 tonnes of spent fuel from the country's long decommissioned reactors in deteriorating stores.
Children living across the river from Oldbury Power Station may be far more likely to die of leukemia.
A leading expert claims new evidence gathered around the power station in South Gloucestershire could undermine the whole nuclear industry.
The study says that children living across the River Severn in Chepstow are 11 times more likely to die of leukemia than the national average.
