How is radioactive waste produced?
As a pioneer in the development and use of nuclear technology, the UK has accumulated a substantial legacy of radioactive waste from various civil and defence programmes. Waste continues to be produced where radioactive materials are used. The nuclear power industry is the source of most radioactive waste in the UK. This includes waste from: • manufacture of nuclear fuel; • nuclear power stations which generate electricity; • reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel; • research and development programmes. Reprocessing in the UK now only takes place at Sellafield in Cumbria, where spent fuel from most of the UK’s power stations, together with fuel from overseas reactors, undergoes chemical processes to recover potentially useful uranium and plutonium. The UK has ten operating nuclear power stations, and these generate about a fifth of the UK’s electricity supply. Nine others, which have stopped producing electricity, are working towards being dismantled, but so far, following the removal of a
