Paul Flynn – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Energy and Climate Change

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Paul Flynn on 2014-03-25.

To ask the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, what steps the Government plans to take to deliver the commitments on nuclear security contained in paragraph 21 of the Hague Nuclear Security Summit Communiqué of the Nuclear Security Summit held in the Hague on 24 and 25 March 2014 to keep the national stockpile of separated plutonium to the minimum level.

Michael Fallon

The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) has published strategies for the management of spent Magnox and Oxide fuel; it is from these spent fuels that plutonium is separated. These strategies are aligned with UK Government policy and their implementation is expected to see cessation of reprocessing in Magnox and THORP facilities during this decade.

With respect to Magnox fuel, the intent is to reprocess all of it. Only a finite amount of Magnox fuel remains, which limits the amount of further separated plutonium that could be produced from reprocessing. Reprocessing is the only approved process for managing this metal fuel.

With respect to Oxide Fuel management, an NDA paper sets out the strategy which is to complete the reprocessing contracts in THORP, as far as is reasonably practicable, and place the remaining fuel and any future arisings into interim storage pending disposal. The paper can be found at http://www.nda.gov.uk/documents/upload/Oxide-Fuels-Preferred-Options-June-2012.pdf

Both these strategies see the amount of plutonium separated in the future being limited in line with national requirements.

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