Waste transfer milestone at Scottish plant
The retrieval has been completed of more than 2100 tonnes of solid intermediate-level radioactive waste from five above-ground concrete bunkers at the Hunterston A Magnox nuclear power plant in Scotland. The project began 20 years ago.
Hunterston A - a twin Magnox reactor site - is 30 miles south west of Glasgow and was Scotland's first civil nuclear generating station. The plant, opened in 1964, ceased operations in 1989 after generating a total of 73 TWh of electricity.
Intermediate-level waste (ILW) was transported from the plant via underground tunnels and stored in one of five above-ground concrete bunkers that were constructed on site between the 1960s and 1980s. This waste consists of contaminated metallic components, debris removed from used fuel elements and 30,000 fuel element graphite sleeves.
Nuclear Restoration Services (NRS) - which is responsible for safely decommissioning the first generation nuclear and research sites across the UK - said the Hunterston A site holds the largest inventory of solid ILW across all its sites.
