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ARTICLE · 07 JANUARY 2014

Consultation On UK Geological Disposal Facility Opened

Zyda Law
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On the 12th September 2013, the Secretary of State for the Department of Energy and Climate Change (‘DECC’), Ed Davey, opened a public consultation on the (re-opening of the) siting selection process for the proposed Geological Disposal Facility (‘GDF’); as part of the government’s Managing Radioactive Waste Safely (‘MRWS’) programme, a plan that originally began in 2008 and had encountered significant setbacks.

United KingdomEnvironment
Zyda Law
Zyda Law

On the 12th September 2013, the Secretary of State for the Department of Energy and Climate Change ('DECC'), Ed Davey, opened a public consultation on the (re-opening of the) siting selection process for the proposed Geological Disposal Facility ('GDF'); as part of the government's Managing Radioactive Waste Safely ('MRWS') programme, a plan that originally began in 2008 and had encountered significant setbacks.

The GDF would store the UK's high level radioactive waste (HLW) - which can remain radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years and is currently stored in interim storage facilities (ponds and dry storage). It is intended that the HLW will be processed to make it as safe as possible, encased in man-made protective packaging and then emplaced underground in the GDF. Construction of the GDF will be a multi-billion pound engineering project and will take many years to be operational, the current target being 2040.

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