Nuclear reprocessing involves chopping up the 'spent'nuclear fuel from a nuclear reactor, then dissolving it in nitric acid. The process was designed to separate out plutonium from the other radioactive products in waste fuel - for the production of nuclear weapons and for use in (now abandoned) fast-breeder reactors.
There are two reprocessing plants in the UK, both located at Sellafield in Cumbria. One, known as Building 205 (B205) treats waste fuel from the UK's aged Magnox reactors. The other, known as THORP, treats fuel from UK AGR reactors and reactors from abroad. Both have been owned by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) since April 2005 and operated, on their behalf by contractor British Nuclear Fuels Ltd (BNFL), a government owned company. The only other commercial operating plant is at La Hague in France.
