BNFL's MOX plant was built in 1996 but has only run on a pilot basis so far. It is one of a number of production and reprocessing plants operated by the company at its Sellafield site in Cumbria. The new facility is a fuel processing plant that produces mixed oxide (MOX) pellets for nuclear reactors by combining highly toxic plutonium with uranium.
Much of the raw materials for this come from the nearby THORP plant, also at Sellafield, where spent reactor fuel rods are melted down in nitric acid. This separates the materials so some of the plutonium and uranium can be recovered.
This in turn is processed back into uranium fuel rods and MOX pellets as fresh reactor fuel.
THORP has been in production for some time and discharges radioactive waste into the Irish Sea. The MOX plant in full production would also produce both solid and liquid wastes, some of which would be discharged into the sea.
