Eight months can be a long time in the nuclear business. In July last year, British Nuclear Fuels was riding high. The government had just announced plans for the partial privatisation of the company, a move that would give a huge boost to its plans for expansion into the international cleanup and decommissioning business. Things were even looking up at Sell-afield. At the huge Cumbria site, dogged by controversy, the core reprocessing plant Thorp had overcome a serious technical problem and resumed production. The company was looking forward to receiving consent to commission the £300m Sellafield Mox plant built on the site to convert the products from reprocessing into a mixed plutonium-uranium fuel.
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