The Independent (May 9)
2011/ 05/ 11 by jd in Global News
The closure of the Hamaoka nuclear facility will affect the future of a nuclear fuel plant at Sellafield in Cumbria. Hamaoka was scheduled to become Sellafield’s biggest customer for mixed oxide (Mox) nuclear fuel. The UK has more spent plutonium fuel than any other country and Sellafield was designed to reprocess this plutonium as nuclear fuel. Little has gone according to plan. Since 2001, the “Sellafield Mox Plant has been beset by problems. Instead of producing 120 tonnes of fuel a year, it has managed just over 13 tonnes in eight years, at a total cost to the taxpayer of £1.34bn – and a further £800m in future running costs expected this decade.”
