waste

The Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) plan to send up to 5,000 barrels of Higher Activity Waste to Sellafield for treatment and storage.

Interim Storage of  Laid Up Submarines (ISOLUS) will be subject to a 2nd Public Consultation at the end of 2009. The nuclear reactor compartments (RCs) and contaminated pipework has to be stored until a long-term storage facility for nuclear waste is established. NIS has taken a sideways look at the options regarding the CUT UP of RCs for boxed storage and CUT OUT of RCs to be stored as a whole submarine section. The 1st consultation and current NGO policy is to support Cut Out.

No military waste is classified as HLW. Spent Fuel from submarine reactors is stored in dedicated Ministry Of Defence (MOD) ponds at BNFL Sellafield, Cumbria but is not listed in the Dept. of the Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (DEFRA) Inventory of all nuclear waste.

New Scientist article 12 May 2007 p.4

Depleted uranium is a dense, weakly radioactive metal used in armour-piercing shells.  Hundreds of tonnes of them were fired by US and UK forces in Iraq in 2003.  Previous research at the US government's Sandia National Labs in New Mexico found that people exposed to DU dust were at little extra risk of developing cancers (New Scientist, 30 July 2005, p5).