Abstract
The London Universities’ CONSORT reactor commenced operations in 1965 at Imperial College’s Silwood Park Campus in Berkshire. One of several research reactors constructed for universities around that time, by the mid 1990s CONSORT was the only one remaining in service. By 2011 increasing costs and a lack of research, educational, training or commercial use caused the College to initiate a decommissioning project, with the fuel being successfully removed and transported to Sellafield in July 2014. The recently revised programme now anticipates all physical structures being removed by late 2019 and final site de-licensing in 2021.
The Project Director (David Forbes) and Project Manager (Trevor Chambers) will talk about the decision to decommission CONSORT, progress and lessons learnt to date and the schedule for the remainder of the decommissioning project.