Norway's NND Applies to Take Over Kjeller Nuclear Facility, Public Consultation Launched

en.Wedoany.com Reported - On October 9, the Norwegian nuclear safety regulator DSA announced that it had received a license application from Norwegian Nuclear Decommissioning (NND) to take over ownership and operational responsibility for the Kjeller nuclear facility, and launched a public consultation with a deadline of November 20. The application covers the legacy research reactor facilities currently managed by the Institute for Energy Technology (IFE), the radioactive waste receiving facility, and the spent nuclear fuel storage facility. The DSA will assess NND's nuclear safety management capability and submit a licensing recommendation to the government.

The Kjeller nuclear facility comprises multiple components. Among them, Radavfallsanlegget serves as the national radioactive waste receiving facility, undertaking the function of receiving radioactive waste; it also includes a spent nuclear fuel storage facility and several facilities related to past reactor operations at Kjeller. Between 1951 and 2019, IFE built and operated a total of four research reactors at Kjeller and Halden: JEEP I at Kjeller (1951–1967), the NORA critical assembly at Kjeller (1961–1968), the Halden Materials Testing Reactor (1959–2018), and JEEP II at Kjeller (1966–2019). Among these, JEEP II was a 2 MW thermal power heavy-water pool-type reactor using heavy water as coolant, with a coolant temperature of 50 to 56 degrees Celsius, an operating pressure of 1 bar, and 3.5% enriched uranium oxide fuel with a total of 19 fuel assemblies. These reactors played a central role in research in areas such as neutron-based measurement methods, materials technology, and isotopes for radiopharmaceuticals.

Cleanup work will be carried out simultaneously at Halden and Kjeller, is expected to take decades, and is currently estimated to cost between 33 billion and 57 billion Norwegian kroner (approximately 3.6 billion to 6.2 billion US dollars), depending on the option chosen. To date, a total of 16.5 tonnes of spent nuclear fuel has been left behind at the Kjeller and Halden facilities, currently stored in IFE's facilities. In addition, Kjeller also stores 166 drums of plutonium-contaminated legacy waste from former disposal trenches, which are currently stored in caverns at Himdalen. NND's budget documents show that the total cost of cleanup and remediation work between 2018 and 2060 is estimated at between 32.95 billion and 56.6 billion Norwegian kroner. This estimate is higher than previously expected because the cleanup work is taking longer and is more complex than previously envisaged, and the new estimate covers the costs of operating and maintaining the nuclear facilities before decommissioning begins, as well as the operation of necessary new facilities before the radioactive waste disposal repository is put into service.

The Halden nuclear facility was transferred from IFE to NND on April 1, 2025, with NND gaining 129 new colleagues in this transfer. The Norwegian government announced on May 11 that it would accelerate the transfer of the Kjeller nuclear facility from IFE to NND, with the transfer possible as early as January 1, 2027. The internal target transfer date agreed between NND and IFE is January 1, 2027. According to IFE's annual report, the expected completion time for the transfer of the Kjeller facility is the third quarter of 2028, and it must be completed before IFE's existing license expires on December 31, 2028. After the transfer is completed, NND plans to take approximately 20 to 25 years to complete the cleanup work, with the goal of fully clearing the facility area of nuclear activity traces and releasing it for other uses by 2045, and the final radioactive waste disposal repository is expected to be completed by 2070.