History
Construction of THORP started in the 1970s, and was completed in 1994. The plant went into operation in August 1997.
Between 1977 and 1978 an inquiry was held into an application by British Nuclear Fuels plc for outline planning permission to build a new plant to reprocess irradiated oxide nuclear fuel from both UK and foreign reactors. The inquiry was to answer three questions: "1. Should oxide fuel from United Kingdom reactors be reprocessed in this country at all; whether at Windscale or elsewhere? 2. If yes, should such reprocessing be carried on at Windscale? 3. If yes, should the reprocessing plant be about double the estimated site required to handle United Kingdom oxide fuels and be used as to the spare capacity, for reprocessing foreign fuels?". The result of the inquiry was that the new plant, the Thermal Oxide Reprocessing Plant, was given the go-ahead in 1978, although it was not completed until the 1990s at a cost of £1.8 billion.
In 1998/99, the plant faced severe economic difficulties when it failed to reach its reprocessing targets. Shut-downs for six months in the first half of 1998 and for several further months from December 1998, due to leakages, resulted in a failure to achieve the target of reprocessing 900 tonnes of fuel over that period. Most of the reprocessing contracts were with Germany and Japan.
Read more about this topic: Thermal Oxide Reprocessing Plant
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“Racism is an ism to which everyone in the world today is exposed; for or against, we must take sides. And the history of the future will differ according to the decision which we make.”
—Ruth Benedict (1887–1948)
“In history the great moment is, when the savage is just ceasing to be a savage, with all his hairy Pelasgic strength directed on his opening sense of beauty;—and you have Pericles and Phidias,—and not yet passed over into the Corinthian civility. Everything good in nature and in the world is in that moment of transition, when the swarthy juices still flow plentifully from nature, but their astrigency or acridity is got out by ethics and humanity.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)