Decommissioning

All facilities within the commercial nuclear fuel cycle will eventually need to be decommissioned following permanent closure of many of these nuclear facilities. There are also many nuclear research facilities and defense related establishments that will require decommissioning, these are creating another huge industry for the UK and International market.

• In 2002 over 90 commercial reactors, 50 fuel cycle facilities, 250 research facilities and around 100 mines have been retired from operation. Many are currently being or have successfully been decommissioned.
• The global decommissioning market is roughly estimated to be worth £300B over the next 30 years.
• There are £60 billion+ programs to decommission ageing nuclear reactors
• In the UK a planned $140bn+ will be for cleanup programmes
• The market is currently estimated to be worth around £56 billion.

The nature of the decommissioning process means these facilities can't simply be switched off and knocked down, the technical, environmental and managerial challenges are considerable. Experienced engineers with solid R&D programme experience will need to be brought in and utilised if this period of decommissioning is to be successfully undertaken. The UK is already working with international partners, who are experienced in this field, to find new and innovative ideas for decommissioning. With the UK's own advances and this joint venturing the UK should complete this decommissioning successfully.

By about 2012, most of these facilities will have ceased to operate. Final decisions on plant closures or the acceptance of new contracts extending their lives are ultimately for Government to make, albeit with the advice of bodies such as the NDA. Waste management Within the nuclear industry waste management and decommissioning have been carried out for over half a century. Nuclear power is the only energy-producing technology which takes full responsibility for all its wastes and fully costs this into the product. The amount of radioactive waste is also very small in relation to the waste produced by fossil fuel electricity generation. Used nuclear fuel may be treated as a resource or simply as a waste. All parts of the nuclear fuel cycle produce some radioactive waste (radwaste) and the cost of managing and disposing of this is internalised. At each stage of the fuel cycle there are proven technologies to dispose of the radioactive wastes safely.

All UK waste is securely contained and an ever-increasing proportion is being solidified to make it suitable for long-term management. Other countries have already demonstrated that safe and secure long-term management and permanent disposal of nuclear waste is technically feasible. Following successful Government and public consultation, the process for constructing deep geological radioactive waste disposal sites is under way in countries such as Finland and Sweden.

If a fleet of new plants were commissioned to replace the current ones they would only add around 10% to the volume of existing waste over their 60-year lifespan. There is also an increasing reluctance to dispose of used fuel because it represents a significant energy resource which could be reprocessed at a later date to allow recycling of the uranium and plutonium.