Meg, the uranium is burnt in the reactor with the plutonium.

Can all these very clever commentators, Councillor Woodburn excluded, tell us how the Uranium generated from the burning of the Plutonium is going to be disposed of? No? i thought not, some other generations problem.

Does this not show the shortsightedness of shutting THORP? GE Hitachi have previously said that the current plutonium stocks would only take five years to burn. Clearly they're not going to go to the expense of licensing and building a new nuclear power plant and then only run it for five years before closing it down, so at the end of that five years presumably they'll be looking for other sources of plutonium to run it. By continuing to run THORP the NDA could have a steady stream of income for years - and hence reduce costs to the taxpayer - by selling the product from THORP to GEH. Unfortunately it seems the NDA would rather that all of us as taxpayers pay for the spent fuel from all the remaining reactors in Britain to be stored in THORP's ponds post-2018, and that we then pay through our taxes again for that fuel to go in the dump.