As it gears up to build another generation of nuclear plants, Britain is expecting to close down its £470 million facility at Sellafield which converts plutonium waste into new nuclear fuel, The Guardian reckons. The plant, which was launched 10 years ago and is the only one in the country, was supposed to help use up plutonium recovered from nuclear waste by turning it into MOx fuel (mixed oxides of uranium and plutonium). It’s never been a success, reprocessing less than 3 tonnes of fuel a year since it started, and being dogged by embarrassing technical problems.

According to a strategy document recently published by Britain’s Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA), which is wondering what to do with plutonium:

NDA have reviewed SMP [the Sellafield MOx plant] and do not believe that it provides either the capacity or longevity to be used for the UK civil stockpile and the recycle options that NDA has considered assumed that plutonium is either sold direct or that MOx is fabricated in a new plant.

Industry sources say that means curtains for the old MOx plant, The Guardian says, though the NDA says it hasn’t made a formal recommendation yet.

Admittedly, the plant was never licensed to produce MOx fuel from UK stockpiles of plutonium – rather, it was built to make it for overseas customers. Current government policy is to store UK plutonium (on economic grounds). They’ll have to build a new MOx plant – perhaps importing the technology from France – if they decide to go down the reprocessing route in future.

The Guardian also highlights the disbanding of an expert advisory committee, the Nuclear Safety Advisory Committee (NuSAC), last October, following a review into nuclear regulation [pdf] by government adviser Tim Stone. The committee had warned of ‘substantial slippages’ in programmes to deal with radioactive waste, and its members aren’t happy with it being scrapped. ‘This was just the time to get rid of a potential pest and spanner in the works of the brave new world of nuclear regulation and build,’ one unnamed member tells the paper.