Blogposts tagged 'Nda'

Nuclear waste company says, "Whoops, some of our files are missing"

Posted by jamie - 17 February 2009 at 1:12pm - 0 Comments

Greenpeace volunteers protest about plutonium shipments between the UK and Japan

Back in 1999, Greenpeace was protesting about plutonium shipments destined for the Mox plant at Sellafield. Now the plant may have to close © Greenpeace/Sims

In the 'funny if it weren't so scary' category we have the advert which ran last week in the Whitehaven News, the local paper for west Cumbria where Sellafield is to be found. As reported in the Guardian at the weekend, LLW Repository Ltd - the company which has recently taken over managing the site - have found there are significant holes in records detailing what radioactive waste was dumped in the repository at nearby Drigg; so they're appealing for people who worked at Sellafield in the 60s, 70s and 80s to rack their brains and fill in the gaps. 

Article tagged as: mox fuel, NDA, nuclear power, nuclear waste, sellafield, videos

Briefing: Chaos in the UK's nuclear Clean-up Industry

Publication date:  24 July, 2008

A Greenpeace briefing on the government's internal audit ("Response to the Business and Enterprise Committee Funding the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority") and follow up report ("NDA Budgetting Shortfall 2007-08: Lesson Learned"). These reports expose massive cost overruns, amateurish bureaucratic cock-ups and complete chaos within the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority - the organisation charged with cleaning up the UK's lethal radioactive legacy.

Download the report:
Article tagged as: decommissioning, NDA, nuclear power, reports

Whitehall farce explodes over nuclear clean-up and clean energy commitments

Posted by jamie - 24 July 2008 at 1:55pm - 4 Comments

Well, what do you know? Another news story has broken which demonstrates that the UK's nuclear industry is not the robust, well-managed machine our ministers would have us believe. The government has sneaked out a report assessing the working practices of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) which is managing the clean-up of existing power stations and waste. They were clearly hoping no one would notice as there's no doubt that many people have been caught with their pants anklewards.

Article tagged as: climate change, energy, NDA, nuclear power, nuclear waste, renewable energy

Nuclear power failure

Posted by John Sauven - 18 July 2008 at 3:50pm - 0 Comments

Gordon Brown says the UK is at the forefront of a global 'nuclear renaissance'. But despite all the rhetoric, the real picture is grim, writes John Sauven for The Guardian's Comment is free.

Just this week Prime Minister Gordon Brown confidently assured us that the UK was at the forefront of a global "nuclear renaissance" and that within a few years we'd be home to at least eight bright, shining new reactors. We're told a week is a long time in politics, but it must seem an absolute eternity to the ever more bedraggled British nuclear industry.

Article tagged as: energy, NDA, nuclear power

Big fat bribes for anyone willing to live with nuclear waste

Posted by jamie - 12 June 2008 at 2:01pm - 0 Comments

We've known for quite some time that the government's preferred solution to that nagging problem of all the nuclear waste currently lying around the place is to dump it in a big hole in the ground. Nice. However, they've had trouble finding anywhere in the country which has been willing to live with this waste bubbling away beneath their feet but now they've come up with the perfect solution: bribery!

Article tagged as: bribery, NDA, nuclear power, nuclear waste, nuclear waste white paper, sellafield

Black Tuesday blights Brown's nuclear vision

Posted by jossc - 29 May 2008 at 10:32am - 8 Comments

Major ongoing problems at Sellafield have been hidden from the public

Sellafield: major ongoing problems have been hidden from the public

Yesterday, Gordon Brown felt compelled to go on the record to announce that the UK needs to not only maintain but to increase its nuclear power capacity. And yet the nuclear industry is not exactly hale and hearty because, let's face it, it's been a terrible week for the poor dears.

Article tagged as: british energy, decommissioning, NDA, nuclear power, nuclear waste, sellafield, sizewell

Sellafield produces very little of anything - apart from headaches for its operators

Posted by ben - 3 March 2008 at 4:58pm - 0 Comments

Sellafield

More gloomy news from Cumbria, where yet another pall of tenebrous darkness has descended over the hapless nuclear monolith that is Sellafield. This particular cloud comes in the form of the hugely expensive and much-vaunted MOX Plant, whose job it is to turn reprocessed material (mainly in the form of plutonium and depleted uranium) into new MOX fuel.

In theory MOX, which stands for mixed oxide, can then be exported overseas and used to power some reactors in countries like France and Japan. In theory, that is. Because in practice it turns out the plant isn't producing much of anything. Apart from headaches for its operators.

Article tagged as: environment agency, malcolm wicks, mox fuel, NDA, nuclear power, nuclear subsidies, sellafield

Out of commission

Posted by John Sauven - 31 January 2008 at 9:43am - 10 Comments

The cost of taking nuclear plants out of service is spiralling out of control. Is this just poor financial management, or does it have wider implications? Written by Greenpeace Executive Director John Sauven for comment is free.

This week, the National Audit Office released its damning assessment of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority's (NDA) ability to estimate the true financial cost of decommissioning and cleaning up the UK's fleet of ailing reactors and contaminated facilities. As costs for decommissioning appear to spiral out of control - rising sharply from £56bn to £73bn over just a few years - the burden on the taxpayer grows ever more. And it doesn't end there. The NDA has also been made responsible for disposing of the UK's stockpile of legacy wastes which is estimated at an additional £10-20bn. The industry argues these increased costs have arisen in the face of "significant challenges", but the echoes from this announcement are all too familiar from a sector that has been plagued with industrial and financial incompetence.

Article tagged as: decommissioning, energy, john sauven, NDA, nuclear power, nuclear subsidies, nuclear waste

An expensive white, radioactive elephant

Posted by jamie - 29 November 2007 at 5:54pm - 0 Comments

Ever since the government started ranting about the joy of new nuclear power stations, a central plank of their shaky argument has been that the billions required will be covered by industry and not the taxpayer. But despite these bold claims, legislation and loopholes have been carefully engineered so that public money will inevitably subsidise the industry. Hardly surprising, given there hasn't been a single civil nuclear project that hasn't required huge sums of public dosh.

Article tagged as: climate change, DBERR, NDA, nuclear power

Here I go again - nuclear waste costs spiral up, up and away

Posted by ben - 12 October 2007 at 2:08pm - 4 Comments

By Ben, senior nuclear campaigner.

As a closet power ballad fan, when I heard that the taxpayers' bill for cleaning up our existing piles of nuclear waste is skyrocketing (according to the UK Nuclear Decommissioning Agency, or NDA), I couldn't help but think of hard rockin' übergroup Whitesnake's "Here I go again".

Almost every time the nuclear industry gives an estimation of their costs, whether it be for building reactors, pulling them down, storing waste or somehow disposing of it, they have this very predictable habit of spiraling higher and higher, usually in very short order.

Article tagged as: decommissioning, NDA, nuclear power, nuclear waste
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