Guardian:
General Electric (GE) Hitachi's plan to build a sodium-cooled,
plutonium-burning fast reactor at the Sellafield nuclear
reprocessing site has been rejected by the UK government's
Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA). Known as PRISM (Power
Reactor Innovative Small Module), the new design was intended
to convert the 82-ton plutonium stockpile at the site into
power. The NDA concluded that PRISM's technology is neither
mature nor commercially proven. There are also security risks
inherent in the proposal, because it would require converting
the existing plutonium stockpile from an oxide form to a metal
form, which is easier to make into bombs. In addition, the
conversion would create a substantial quantity of
plutonium-contaminated salt as a byproduct, which would also
need to be managed and stored.
