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Your editorial ‘A nuclear folly in the making’ (14 August) alleges that
the customers of British Nuclear Fuel’s £2.8 billion thermal oxide
reprocessing plant (Thorp) are ‘handcuffed’ to it by the reprocessing contracts
they have agreed. If this were the case, then why are Thorp’s customers
writing to both BNFL and the British government urging the plant to be given
the go-ahead as soon as possible?

German and Swiss customers have all recently reaffirmed their commitment
to the plant, as have both of our British customers. Japanese customers
have purchased full-page advertisements in the English national newspapers
urging Thorp to go ahead as soon as possible. In the adverts they say:

‘We actually want our plutonium and uranium back. We need the plutonium
to fuel the new generation of fast nuclear reactors. And plutonium can also
be used to manufacture a nuclear fuel called MOX (mixed oxide fuel) for
use in conventional reactors.’

The actions of our customers and the £9 billion worth of orders
– more than half from overseas – speak for themselves. Unfortunately, your
editorial article seems to ignore these facts and relies, instead, upon
fictitious inventions by an increasingly desperate anti-Thorp lobby.

John Guinness British Nuclear Fuels London