Feb 1 2008 by Tom Simone, Daily Post
Radioactive waste – mostly caesium and cobalt, with traces of uranium – will be stored at Trawsfynydd until the government designates a national depository.
Although there are no definite plans for what to do with radioactive waste in the long term, a geological solution, where waste is buried, is favoured.
The next section of work at Trawsfynydd will include reducing the 70m high reactors by 27m and improving their aesthetic appearance.
All high level radioactive waste from the Gwynedd plant was taken to Sellafield between 1993 and 1995.
The new building can store 363 litre-cubed boxes of waste and 2,400 drums of ion exchange resin.
Trawsfynydd will store radioactive waste in containers within concrete overpacks, surrounded in their turn by reinforced concrete boxes and external steel-clad ‘envelopes’.
These will be kept in the new storage building.
Trawsfynydd came online in 1965 and stopped being operational in 1993.
The cost of decommissioning all the ageing nuclear power sites across the UK over the next 100 years is currently estimated to be £73bn by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority.