After four years of work, more than 10,000 square metres of walls, floors and ceilings at the ponds complex of the UK’s closed Bradwell NPP have been decontaminated, contractor Magnox said on 20 September. The ponds, which were used to temporarily store and cool used nuclear fuel before it was sent to Sellafield for reprocessing, were drained and stabilised in 2012. Since then, work has continued to remove redundant equipment and decontaminate the rest of the associated buildings and infrastructure. One of the next phases of work at the Bradwell site will be to demolish the redundant ponds building and remaining ancillary buildings, followed by installation of weatherproof cladding over the remaining buildings. There are two gas-cooled reactors at Bradwell, but both were permanently shut down in 2002.
