Last of UK’s nuclear reprocessing plants to close
Sellafield’s Magnox plant will enter a new era of clean-up and decommissioning in July
One of the world’s oldest nuclear reprocessing plants – and the last remaining one in the UK – will cease operations in July this year.
Since its opening in 1964, the Magnox reprocessing facility at Sellafield in northern England has received almost 55,000 tonnes of spent nuclear fuel from Magnox power stations across the country, as well as from reactors in Italy and Japan. Magnox are carbon dioxide-cooled reactors that run on unenriched uranium with graphite as the moderator. They take their name from the magnesium–aluminium alloy cladding around the uranium fuel rods.