Karl Herchenroeder
RW Monitor
2/12/2016

The Essex County Council has decided that an application to store nuclear waste along the coast at the Bradwell Power Station in the United Kingdom does not warrant a formal environmental impact assessment.

In a Feb. 2 memorandum, the Essex County environmental planning office said the application submitted by plant owner Magnox doesn’t meet the criteria needed to require formal assessment. In particular, it’s the office’s opinion that the development would not have significant adverse effects on the environment.

Magnox is proposing to transport intermediate-level waste from the Sizewell A and Dungeness A power stations, respectively near Suffolk and Kent, to the existing Bradwell interim storage facility, located along the Essex coastline. The existing facility has a capacity of 232 ductile cast iron containers, and Magnox projects storage between 166 and 173 canisters at the facility moving forward. Transportation of the material is expected to take place between 2018 and late 2020.

The material later would be shipped to the national Geological Disposal Facility, which is under development. The U.K. Nuclear Decommissioning Authority anticipates opening the repository by 2040 at the latest.

In the memorandum, environmental planners listed a number of potential impacts from the project. They include: delays in transportation to the Geological Disposal Facility; increased traffic generation; and potential for pollution from interaction between imported materials and bodies of water, including the sea. Still, the planning office concluded that the potential impacts are not significant “in terms of regulations or could not be further mitigated through appropriate management plans/conditioning.”

“The proposal would make use of, and be complimentary to the activities already being undertaken within the existing Bradwell ISF,” planners wrote. “The proposal would not extend the physical footprint nor timescale over which the ISF was designed to be available.”