The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority

Plutonium Options

07 November 2008

The comment period on our draft plutonium options paper has closed with more than 40 responses submitted.

For more information see Plutonium Strategy Pages

The three broad options for dealing with the UK’s stockpile are re-use, disposal and continued storage or any combination of these. The paper posed a number of questions around these options and also asked people to comment on the validity of certain assumptions it had made.

We held a workshop in Manchester on 15 October 2008 to consider the responses with some stakeholders who had previously been involved in discussions about plutonium management. The workshop was designed to help us in planning the way forward for future engagement and communication on the issue.

Nicole Hough, our plutonium options project manager, said:

“We had some helpful comments on important issues that stakeholders thought were missing, such as reversibility, public acceptability and a contingent strategy. We also found a lot of concern about Government policy areas, such as energy utilisation and proliferation resistance.

Ms Hough continued:

“We now believe we have a better definition of the work that needs to be done before decisions can be taken to move forward with our own strategy management. This data will also provide a platform to discuss policy issues and policy guidance with Government.”

An independent report on the workshop has been published:

 Plutonium Options Stakeholder Workshop Report October 2008 (2Mb) 

and the submitted stakeholder comments will follow once we’ve checked that people are happy their views can be made public. We also plan to publish a response to the workshop report and a definition of credible options on the website.

As there was so much interest in the workshop we are considering hosting another similar one in the next few weeks for those that were not able to attend.

The NDA intends to present its paper on options for plutonium to Government in December 2008. This paper will build on work carried out by BNFL and the NDA’s Materials Issues Group.

The structure of the report is likely to include the options and, among other issues suggested by stakeholders, their financial, environmental and socio-economic impacts. The report will also include stakeholder views on each option and, if applicable, recommendations for future work.