Sellafield Vitrification should ensure safe storage of waste in the UK for the middle to long term. Construction of the Sellafield MOX Plant (SMP) was completed in 1997, though justification for the operation of the plant was not achieved until October 2001. Mixed oxide, or MOX fuel, is a blend of plutonium and natural uranium or depleted uranium which behaves similarly (though not identically) to the enriched uranium feed for which most nuclear reactors were designed. MOX fuel is an alternative to low enriched uranium (LEU) fuel used in the light water reactors which predominate in nuclear power generation. MOX also
Torness Nuclear Power Station AGR station. The construction, which was undertaken by a consortium known as National Nuclear Corporation ('NNC'), began in 1980. The reactors were supplied by NNC and the turbines by GEC. Torness was the last of the United Kingdom's second generation nuclear power plants to be commissioned (25 May 1988). The station consists of two advanced gas-cooled reactors (AGR) capable of producing a peak rating of 1364 MWe. Upon deregulation of the United Kingdom's electricity generation market it passed to the state-owned Scottish Nuclear, privatised as part of British Energy which was sold to the French company EDF in January 2009,