What is a reprocessing plant?
A nuclear fuel reprocessing plant is a chemical plant, which separates plutonium and unused uranium from spent nuclear waste fuel. Because its raw material is intensely radioactive, all operations must be carried out by remote control, behind heavy shielding. Firstly the cladding around the spent fuel element is stripped off (this becomes intermediate-level waste) and then the bare fuel rod is dropped into a vat of nitric acid which dissolves it ready for reprocessing. This nitric acid solution is then treated with various solvents to separate out plutonium and unused uranium, leaving behind highly radioactive liquid waste which is transferred to storage tanks. The uranium metal fuel used in Magnox reactors and the uranium oxide fuel used in most other reactor types have to be treated slightly differently, which is why there are two different reprocessing plants at Sellafield. The original reason for separating the unused uranium from spent nuclear waste fuel was so that it could be re
