Countries that utilise all parts of the nuclear fuel cycle will generate a very much wider range of wastes. The UK, for example, is active in enrichment, fuel production, electricity generation and nuclear fuel reprocessing. Consequently the UK National Inventory of Radioactive Waste contains over 1000 different waste streams. These include everything from wastes that are barely above exemption level (a few becquerels per gram) to raffinate, a solution of fission products and minor actimides in nitric acid, which is the residue after uranium and plutonium have been extracted from spent nuclear fuel in reprocessing. Here the activity is so high that, when stored, it must be continuously cooled.* Reprocessing also produces long-lived intermediate-level wastes that require deep disposal. These include fuel element structural materials such as rod hulls and ends and process wastes such as ion exchange resins and ferric floc.

Wastes produced by enrichment and fuel fabrication mostly consist of items contaminated, respectively, with uranium or uranium and plutonium. A question hangs over the status of depleted uranium — the tailings from enrichment — and of reprocessed uranium, which is only slightly depleted but which may contain unwanted isotopes such as uranium-232 (see Chapter 16 for example). In the absence of a market for this material it may come to be considered as a waste.