Sellafield MOX plant to close - UK [03Aug11] - 0 views
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The manufacture of mixed oxide (MOX) nuclear fuel at Sellafield is to stop "at the earliest practical opportunity" to reduce the financial risks to British taxpayers from events in Japan.
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The closure comes as a result of the Fukushima accident, which dramatically increased uncertainty for the ten Japanese utilities that had placed contracts for supplies of MOX fuel. This is made by combining uranium with plutonium recovered by reprocessing used nuclear fuel. The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA), which owns all the UK state's nuclear assets, said it reviewed the risk profile for operation of Sellafield MOX Plant (SMP) and "concluded that in order to ensure that the UK taxpayer does not carry a future financial burden from SMP that the only reasonable course of action is to close SMP at the earliest practical opportunity."
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Separately Areva last week announced the cancellation of orders for uranium and nuclear fuel amounting to €191 million ($273 million) as a result of the shutdown of reactors in Japan and Germany.The NDA's move to close SMP will be a grave disappointment for the plant's 600 workers, who had celebrated success in raising performance to commercially acceptable levels. Despite being designed to produce 120 tonnes of fuel per year, it never operated properly and was downrated to just 40 tonnes per year. In its nine years of operation to 2010 it produced only 15 tonnes of fuel.
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