Reprocessing of nuclear fuel has been carried out for a number of years in various reprocessing facilities in many of the main nuclear power-producing countries. These facilities include the reprocessing plants at La Hague in France, the Tokai plant in Japan and Sellafield in the UK. A pilot study plant operated near Karlsruhe in Germany,

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a multi-national plant was built at Mol in Belgium and operated from 1966 to 1974 and the West Valley facility was operated for a short time in the US. Fuel reprocessing activities have also taken place in Russia, e. g. the Chelyabinsk plant, see for example Rougeau (1997).

Over the years many thousand tons of spent fuel have been processed. The plants have been adapted to take account of different types of fuel from different types of reactors. These included early gas-cooled reactors in Europe, Magnox and AGRs in the UK, most particularly light water reactors in operation in many countries and some fast reactors.

For example from 1966 to 1987, the UP2 facility at La Hague processed gas-cooled reactor fuels. Fast reactor fuel was processed between 1979 and 1984. Since 1987, UP2 has been utilised in reprocessing LWR fuels only. MOX fuel has been reprocessed since 1992. A newer facility UP3 started in 1990, having the capacity for servicing a range of spent fuels from European and Japanese facilities.

Concerning management of waste, there are currently three industrial-scale vitrification facilities in operation in Europe. COGEMA operates the R7 and T7 facilities at La Hague and BNFL operates a plant of similar design in Sellafield. Much progress has been made in reducing the volume of high — and intermediate-level waste and also in reducing the radiological dose rate to workers, see, e. g. Table 2.14.

Despite these successful operations, public safety concerns do exist and are focussed on perhaps two main issues. These include the level of release of toxic and radioactive releases from the plants and also concerns about proliferation.

Regarding releases, there are concerns that small traces of radioactive material are released even during normal reprocessing operations. The public is not convinced that neither possible routes back to the public and the food chain are properly understood nor that the limits set by the radiological protection bodies are proven to be safe. The concerns in regard to proliferation are that reprocessing enables the recovery of plutonium, which could be utilised for nuclear weapons. It is worth noting, however, that plutonium recovered from LWRs (the most widely used reactor in operation today) is not in the most suitable form for weapons production.

One of the main drivers for reprocessing plutonium is to support a fast reactor fuel cycle, but only a few fast reactors remain in operation at the present time. However, reprocessed plutonium can be used in fresh MOX fuel. Plutonium only remains in a separated state for a relatively short time during the fabrication of MOX fuel, once in the reactor the fissile plutonium content is substantially lessened and a relatively high percentage (30%) of the plutonium content is burned.

Reprocessing activities are carefully monitored by the IAEA and other national bodies to ensure that proliferation issues are properly covered. It should also be stated that without reprocessing, the quantities of plutonium produced in-reactor will remain the same for many years (hundreds of years) after which time separation becomes easier following the decay of shorter lived isotopes.