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Consultants Parsons Brinckerhoff and Gardiner & Theobald have won a four-year contract with the nuclear Decommissioning Agency to help develop plans for a long-term “geological” storage facility for nuclear waste.

The contract to provide technical support for the planned multi-billion pound facility has been awarded to the Orchid Group,

The Geological Disposal Facility will be designed to keep radioactive materials isolated from the environment for thousands of years at a UK location that has yet to be chosen. Engineers on the project will have to create, for the first time, a facility to last for millennia.

IN a first for the UK, the two Magnox reactors at the decommissioned Berkeley nuclear power plant have been placed in "safestore". It means they will remain sealed and in a passive state until the site on the banks of the Severn estuary is finally cleared in about 65 years' time.

Berkeley was the first UK nuclear power plant to produce electricity and its two natural uranium-fuelled reactors came into service in 1962.

It was also the first to be decommissioned 20 years ago. Placing the two reactors in safestore is a first for the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority which now owns the site and the UK nuclear industry. NDA head of programme Sara Johnston said: "This is a hugely significant achievement, not just for the site but for the UK nuclear industry as a whole, demonstrating the progress being made in decommissioning.