Australia to receive UK nuclear waste shipment amid bitter dispute over national storage facility. Two-tonne load to be stored at Sydney’s Lucas Heights until national facility built in several years. Two tonnes of nuclear waste will be shipped from the United Kingdom to Australia next year as debate continues over a national storage facility. The shipment of four 500kg canisters inside a forged steel container called a TN-81 is part of a waste swap deal with the UK. The intermediate-level waste is to be stored temporarily at Sydney’s Lucas Heights facility then sent to the national radioactive waste management facility the federal government plans to build near Kimba in South Australia. However that project is the subject of a bitter dispute, and is years away. It will take several years for all the regulatory approvals to pass, and the government has declined to nominate when it will start construction. In 1996 Australia sent spent fuel rods from its Hifar reactor – the predecessor to the existing Opal multi-purpose reactor – to the UK to be recycled into fuel for nuclear power plants. The “radiologically equivalent” waste will be sent to Australia under the 2022 waste repatriation project. The Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (Arpansa) reported this week that it is working with the UK’s Office for Nuclear Regulation “for the inspection of radioactive waste containers, set to return to Australia from the Sellafield Reprocessing Plant”.
Guardian 21st Oct 2021 read more »