To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what her estimate is of the relative costs of (a) reprocessing 50-year cooled PWR spent reactor fuel and (b) reprocessing five-year cooled fuel at Sellafield using THORP. [109077]

The Government have made no such estimate. It is for the owners of spent fuel to make judgments about the relative merits of reprocessing spent fuel on an early timescale in currently available reprocessing facilities as compared to other spent fuel management options that might be available. It can be noted that, should an owner choose to store spent fuel for an extended period pending future decisions on its final management, the option to reprocess the fuel would be dependent upon the necessary reprocessing facilities then being available. The United Kingdom's only PWR power station is Sizewell B, owned by British Energy, which has been in operation since 1995.

To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what her estimate is of the relative costs of (a) non-reprocessing spent reactor fuel followed by encapsulation and (b) storage at a reactor site with the reprocessing, vitrification and storage as currently practised at Sellafield. [109078]

The Government have made no estimate of the relative costs of different spent fuel management options. It is for the owners of spent fuel to make judgments about the relative merits of reprocessing spent fuel as compared to other spent fuel management options that might in future become available such as direct disposal.