BNFL
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Image:Bnfl sites.png BNFL, British Nuclear Fuels plc, is an international company, owned by the British government, concerned with nuclear power. BNFL was set up in 1971 by HMG from the production division of the UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA), and until 2003 its headquarters were based at Risley, near Warrington. BNFLs headquarters are now at Daresbury Park industrial estate, also near to Warrington.
Since 2005 BNFL has been a holding company, largely operating through its major British Nuclear Group and Westinghouse Electric Company subsidiaries. Westinghouse has now been sold to Toshiba, BNFL has sold its American subsidiary BNG America to Energy Solutions, and BNFL is minded sell British Nuclear Group. BNFL's chairman said in 2005 that BNFL was unlikely to exist within five years.
It manufactures and transports fuel (notably MOX), runs reactors, generates and sells electricity, reprocesses and manages spent fuel (mainly at Sellafield), and decommissions nuclear plants and other similar facilities.
In 1996 the UK's eight most advanced nuclear plants, seven Advanced Gas Cooled Reactor (AGR) and one Pressurised Water Reactor (PWR) sites were privatised as British Energy. The oldest reactors, the Magnox sites, were separated as Magnox Electric plc, which was taken over by BNFL in 1998. All these power plants are to cease generation by 2010. In 1999 BNFL acquired Westinghouse Electric Company, the commercial nuclear power businesses of CBS, (CBS acquired Westinghouse in 1995). It owns nuclear-related sites in the US and also Sweden. The company claims a 12% share of the world's nuclear power generation.
Due to the failure of both the previous Conservative and present Labour governments to tackle the issue of long term storage of high level nuclear waste in the UK and due to historical liabilities the projected decommissioning costs are greater than the Nuclear Liabilities Investment Portfolio will or could hope to contain. This means that BNFL was technically bankrupt. Because of this, the Labour government set-up the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA), which came into force on 1st April 2005. The NDA has already taken control of BNFL's assets. However the NDA cannot take over the liabilities until a judgement is made on state aid by the European Commission [1]. Once this judgement is complete, and assuming that the NDA can take over the liabilities, it will allow BNFL the freedom to concentrate on minimising decommissioning costs. However, the intention is to open up the decomissioning to tender in order to drive down costs and so BNFL will likely be one of a number of decomissioning contractors through its British Nuclear Group subsidiary.
There is much controversy surrounding BNFL's Sellafield plant because of the plant's routine radioactive discharges, nuclear waste accidents, and an excess of leukaemia near the plant.
Sites
Image:Sellafield.JPG The BNFL currently operates at 18 sites in the UK. They are:
- Berkeley (shut down 1989)
- Bradwell (shut down 2002)
- Calder Hall (shut down 2003)
- Capenhurst
- Chapelcross (shut down 2004)
- Daresbury
- Drigg
- Dungeness A
- Hinkley Point A
- Hunterston A
- Littlebrook
- Maentwrog
- Oldbury
- Risley
- Sellafield
- Sizewell A
- Trawsfynydd (shut down 1993)
- Wylfa