Sellafield Plutonium Reactor

[Rheghead]

I thought this might be of interest to people of Caithness and Dounreay.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/jan/24/sellafield-plutonium-reactor-plans-rejected

The UK is sitting on 82 tonnes of plutonium oxide that needs a disposal solution and this idea was to build a reactor to burn it as a metal into useful low carbon electricity. But the proposals have been rejected.

What gets me is that it seems an ambitious project in order to get rid of just 82 tonnes of fissile material. A whole new reactor for what seems to be just a one shot fuelling? :eek:

But then, there may have been a future of said plant if there were longer term plans to revive a fast breeder programme?

[George Brims]

Surely 82 tonnes is going to be more than a one-shot fueling?

[Whitewater]

You will get an awful lot of electricity out of 82 Tons of Plut, but I guess they are not ready for it yet, and a sodium cooled reactor, although probably the safest because of the very low internal pressures it operates at is, unfortunately, very expensive to maintain and unless they they can design some remote method of charging and discharging which is maintenance free, otherwise cleaning the Sodium from a charge machine for maintenance is very expensive and time consuming using current methods.

[Rheghead]

It is to be all used in a £multi-billion 600MW reactor to run for just 5 years. Probably generating £3 billion in energy sales over that time. I can see why they don't think it is viable.