Greens welcome planned closure of Thorp plant

The Green Party has welcomed the decision by British Nuclear Fuels to close the Thorp reprocessing plant at Sellafield before the end of this decade.

Party spokesman Ciaran Cuffe said the planned closure proved that nuclear reprocessing is not an economically-viable procedure.

"There are long-term storage tanks of nuclear material there that will have to be kept safe for hundreds of thousands of years. The nuclear legacy is an expensive one that will continue for a long time," he said.

"I think British taxpayers and politicians have realised that the nuclear industry is costing them billions of pounds and that the easiest way to save money is to close."