There is currently considerable concern amongst BNFL employees, and most people living in West Cumbria, that ending nuclear reprocessing at Sellafield would mean massive job losses and be devastating to the local area. Stopping nuclear reprocessing is nevertheless essential to protect the environment and the health of future generations, and to end the nuclear proliferation threat caused by separating nuclear weapons-usable plutonium.
BNFL often claims that reprocessing must continue because contracts between them and their customers (the nuclear utilities) are legally binding. In addition, because large quantities of spent nuclear fuel have already been sent to Sellafield, and money has been paid up-front for this spent fuel to be reprocessed, it is sometimes argued that reprocessing this fuel is a commitment that cannot be broken.
With the spent fuel placed in the transport flasks and ready to be dispatched to Sellafield, the regulations governing the transport then come into play. There are a bewildering range of rules and regulations...
Summary
Flasks for transporting Magnox and AGR fuel are almost identical. The diagram below shows a typical transport flask, in this case for Magnox fuel, and shows the fuel rods packed horizontally inside the flask in a skip...
Nuclear trains rumbling across UK is a fairly familiar sight these days, but the cream coloured transport 'cabins' hauled in the twighlight hours through towns, cities and countryside conceal the real nuclear cargo - the spent fuel flasks. Because the flasks are generally loaded into their transport cabins at the reactor site, there is seldom any chance to see the flasks themselves. The exception to this is the imported foreign fuel which, having been unloaded at Barrow docks, is transported by rail to Sellafield unprotected by any cabin...
Summary
After 40 years of nuclear power the realities of managing the spent fuel from power station reactors have to be faced. There are 2 basic options for the industry, the first being to store and then directly dispose of the fuel (providing a nuclear dump is available) The second is to send it to Sellafield for reprocessing ...
