UK: The MOX fuel plant at Sellafield in Cumbria, which employs 800 workers, is to close, the Prospect union said today.
Prospect said it had been told the news by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, describing it as “ill-conceived and short-sighted”.
The plant takes plutonium which has been reprocessed from spent nuclear fuel at Sellafield’s Thorp plant, and recycles it into mixed oxide fuel, which can be reused to fuel nuclear reactors.
The union said the closure decision was thought to have been influenced by the lack of funding available from Japanese government contracts, following the earthquake and tsunami which shut down the Fukushima 1 nuclear reactor in March.
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