Managing the UK Plutonium Stockpile

The UK has been amassing its plutonium stockpile since the 1950s, but is yet to make a decision on its long term management.

The key points in this POSTnote are:

• The UK is storing the largest ‘separated’ civil plutonium stockpile in the world. This poses safety, security and cost challenges.
• The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority is assessing long term options for managing the stockpile with industry pushing for a timetable for the selection and delivery of an option.
• Options include disposal of the plutonium in a treated form, reusing it as fuel in UK power plants or sending plutonium overseas in fuel form.
• These options all reduce some of the safety and security concerns associated with storage, but they introduce their own risks.
• Energy policy goals would be helped by one option: reusing the plutonium as fuel in UK power plants.
• It is not currently clear which of the options offers the best economic value for money.

Acknowledgements

POSTnotes are based on literature reviews and interviews with a range of stakeholders and are externally peer reviewed. POST would like to thank interviewees and peer reviewers for kindly giving up their time during the preparation of this briefing, including:

• Sylvian Esperou du Tremblay – Areva
• Tony Morris – Candu
• Laurence Williams – Committee on Radioactive Waste Management
• Francis Livens – Dalton Institute
• Department of Energy and Climate Change (now BEIS)
• Colin Hardman – Environment Agency
• David Powell – GE Power and Water
• Doug Parr – Greenpeace
• Fiona Rayment – National Nuclear Laboratory
• Office for Nuclear Regulation
• Nuclear Decommissioning Authority
• Peter Haslam and Rachel Dowling – Nuclear Industry Association
• David Lowry – Nuclear Waste Advisory Associates
• Cherry Tweed and Sarah Read – Radioactive Waste Management Ltd
• Craig Dobson – Unite
• Bruce Hanson – University of Leeds
• Neil Hyatt – University of Sheffield
• Stephen Tindale – Weinberg Foundation