27th March 2015 marks the 21st anniversary of THORP chopping up its first batch of spent nuclear fuel. Opened in 1994, the £2.85bn plant had been dubbed by British Nuclear Fuels Ltd (BNFL) as the Jewel in Sellafield’s Crown and a World Beating Flagship Plant that would reprocess 7000 tonnes of fuel in its first ten years, win more overseas business and make a profit of £500M in that first decade. Now scheduled to close in 2018, the Jewel has been tarnished beyond recovery by a catalogue of accidents, poor performance and business loss. This briefing by Cumbrians Opposed to a Radioactive Environment looks at what THORP has achieved.
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