Nuclear fuel soon to be cleared from Wylfa site
ALL nuclear fuel at a former Anglesey power plant should soon be off site. The last of the 90,000 nuclear fuel elements from the closed power station at Wylfa are being prepared for transporting to Cumbria by rail.
When these trains cease to run it will signal the end of freight trains on the North Wales line – at least for the time being.
The last nuclear reactor was switched off at Wylfa in December 2015 and the work of defuelling began. At the start of the process the two reactors contained 90,000 fuel elements.
Last autumn Magnox officials revealed staff at Wylfa were
retrieving 1,000 fuel elements a week and shipping seven flasks a week.
Stuart Law, site director, said: “This is down to the highly skilled team who are working round the clock to support the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority’s mission of safely cleaning up the legacy from the earliest days of the UK’s nuclear industry.
“It takes 24 hours to fill a flask with approximately 150 used nuclear fuel elements. The flask is then cleaned in a huge washing-machine and meticulous checks are made to ensure it is safe and compliant for onward transportation to Sellafield.”
He added once the reactors are empty, and all the fuel elements dispatched to Sellafield, over 99% of the site’s radiological hazard will have been removed.
Following the completion of the defuelling the site will move into its care and maintenance preparations phase, which focuses on retrieving, treating and processing any wastes.
The flasks start their journey by road being taken from the Wylfa site to a siding off the main line at Valley. From there they are taken to Crewe and then along the West Coast main line to Carnforth and onto the Cumbrian Coast line for reprocessing.
Trains taking these flasks to the Cumbrian plant have been running in north Wales since the mid-1960s.
The working, under BR sectorisation, was booked for locos drawn from the Trainload Coal fleet.
After privatisation of the railway British Nuclear Fuels Ltd created Direct Rail Services (DRS) to take over British Rail’s handling of nuclear material.
For many years it used elderly, but serviceable, freight locomotives to haul the flask wagons at 60mph along the North Wales line.