GE-Hitachi Makes Formal Proposal to Build PRISM Nuclear Plant in UK

As the UK reaches for ways to dispose of its plutonium dioxide stockpile, GE-Hitachi has offered its salt-cooled small modular reactor as a solution.

On Wednesday the company submitted a proposal to the British government to build a 600 megawatt nuclear plant using PRISM reactors at the former Cold War Sellafield site on the Irish Sea. Using the plutonium for fuel, a GEH representative quoted by the BBC said the reactor could go through the stockpile in about five years.

Including fuel from currently operating reactors that has not yet been processed, the UK will have 109 metric tons of plutonium dioxide to either store or process. The civilian plutonium has accumulated since the 1960s when programs were introduced to separate plutonium from spent reactor fuel for use in breeder reactors that were never built. A plant at Sellafield had been using the plutonium to produce MOX reactor fuel, but it was forced to shut down after losing orders from Japanese utilities in the wake of the Fukushima Daiichi accident. The government has considered building another, more efficient MOX plant to handle the waste, as well as alternatives that include long-term storage or using the plutonium in a thorium reactor.

GEH contends its PRISM reactor would cost less than building a new MOX plant, and the government faces a £2 billion annual cost to maintain the plutonium in its current state. The company’s description of the reactor lists a referenced construction schedule of 36 months.