Transcript

NARRATOR

Calder Hall was what's called a Magnox reactor. They used natural uranium metal fuel clad in a magnesium alloy canister. When the magnesium alloy is stripped from the fuel rods, it's highly radioactive. In the UK, the spent rods are reprocessed to salvage plutonium, but this still produces waste. And further waste is produced when the reactors are eventually dismantled.

SPEAKER 2

A single Magnox reactor in decommissioning will produce about 20,000 tonnes of radioactive waste. That has to be consigned, segregated, packaged, and stored. Some of that radioactive waste has to be stored for tens of years, some for hundreds of years, and some for thousands of years.

NARRATOR

So the birth of nuclear power saw the beginnings of the problem of nuclear waste. At the time, low level waste, such as clothing, was put in shallow pits and covered, but high level, highly radioactive waste was stored on site, awaiting a long term solution.