Oldbury and Berkley nuclear power stations site stakeholder meeting

November 5th 2014

Thornbury Golf Centre

Oldbury

Fifty percent of the fuel has been removed from the two reactors

comprising 26,000 fuel elements.

Oldbury nuclear power station is now shipping flasks at the rate of two or three per week

by road to Berkley, then by rail from there on. 

They estimate that they will send a further 175 flasks to Sellafield

with the last flask leaving Oldbury in 2016.

In the power station the fuel elements are clad in steel.

As they are taken out of the power station the cladding is removed

under water, to protect the workers. 

The steel cladding is then sent to Berkley, where it has been sent for the past 45 years.

The cladding, (fuel element debris or FED) which is classified as intermediate level radioactive waste, 

has been dumped, together with the boronated steel control rods, in underground vaults on the Berkley site up until now.

Berkley has now decided to remove this intermediate level radioactive waste 

from the vaults mechanically and transport it to enormous onsite storage sheds.

Stroud College has agreed to invest money in renovating an old rig hall and a range of office buildings on the Berkley site

to transform it into a college: South Gloucestershire and Stroud (SGS) and Berkley Green College. The NDA has given the college a 999 year lease.

When I asked what was green about it, I was told that Green stands for Gloucestershire Renewable Energy Engineering and Nuclear !!!

When I asked what sort of renewable technology they would be teaching I was told that the building itself would embed renewables:

PV, ground source heat pumps but no wind because people don't like wind  !!!

This college will cater for 14 year olds, as a technical college, or free school. 

They need £10 million for this. Then they need a further £8 million for the degree courses in engineering, manufacturing and construction.

There is also funding for PhDs in:

radionuclide characterisation, waste, packaging and storage, land quality, decommissioning, spent fuel and nuclear material;

i.e. anything that is of benefit to the NDAs mission.

They don't mention any renewable research subject (so no surprise there).

Meanwhile Oldbury continues to discharge radioactive waste water into the Severn from its fuel ponds.

The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA), which owns the sites, contracts them out to a Parent Body,

in this case a consortium of two companies: Cavendish and Fluor, 

Caverndish is the name given to Babcock, a company that employs 27000 employees and is involved in airports, energy, mining, property, rail, training and nukes.

For some reason they are not allowed to use the name Babcock while contracted out by the NDA.

Fluor is an American firm with an annual turnover of £12 billion. Cavendish and Fluor second in personnel to manage Oldbury and Berkley. 

These personnel comprise the site licence company (SLC) and are regulated by the regulators.

Who the regulators are was not made clear, whether another private company or whether government controlled.

The boilers from Berkley nuclear power station were sent to Sweden to be smelted.

Dungoness and Bradwell have fuel element debris dissolution plants. I wonder what they do with the dissolved fuel element debris . . .

Berkley, on the other hand, just stores them.

Berkley publishes a graph showing annual discharges of radioactive aerosols from their reactors, which were put into safe storage in 2010.

They don't actually measure the tritium and carbon 14 but base their estimates on temperature and pressure.

I wonder how they measure the tritium and carbon 14 emissions from Oldbury   . .