Final Shipment of Breeder Reactor Rods Sent from Dounreay to Sellafield

Scotland’s Dounreay site recently completed the last shipment of an 11-ton batch of breeder reactor rids to the Sellafield site for storage in an effort to consolidate U.K. used fuel, the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority announced yesterday. While plans originally called for storing the material on site, in 2011 the U.K. government decided to remove it from Dounreay. For the project’s initial phase, the first of 32 shipments of breeder reactor fuel left the site in December 2012. An additional 33 tons of breeder reactor remains at Dounreay awaiting shipment to Sellafield in subsequent phases. “Together, we have delivered safely and without harm to the public or the environment the first phase of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority’s programme to consolidate its inventory of nuclear fuel and materials in the UK,” Alex Potts, deputy director of fuels at Dounreay, said in a statement. “It significantly reduces the amount of nuclear material at Dounreay and takes us another step closer towards the closure of the site.”