BNFL's decommissioning programme

BNFL has been involved in nuclear operations since the late 1940s and has plants covering the whole of the nuclear cycle, enrichment, fuel manufacture, reactors, reprocessing and waste handling and disposal. Several plants have already become redundant and further plants will become redundant at the end of Magnox reactor fuel reprocessing. The Company has a policy of decommissioning completely all its non-reactor plants within a maximum 50 years of their end of useful life. As some plants have been shutdown since the early 1950s and others are not suitable for any deferment there is already a significant decommissioning challenge and a dedicated decommissioning team has been set up at the largest site, Sellafield, to execute this programme with some twenty-two projects currently ongoing. This paper describes the Company's approach to the challenge, some of the major current projects, the problems being found and their resolution together with the supporting but vital development programme