§ The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Trade and Industry (Nigel Griffiths)The Department will be placing the figures for the United Kingdom's stocks of civil plutonium and uranium as at 31 December 2002 in the Library of the House. In accordance with our commitment under the "Guidelines for the Management of Plutonium", we will also be sending the figures to the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), who will circulate them to member states in due course. The figures will be available on the Department's and the IAEA's websites.
81WSThe figures show that stocks of unirradiated plutonium in the UK totalled 90.8 tonnes at the end of 2002. Major changes from the corresponding figures for 2001 are a consequence of continuing reactor and reprocessing operations (e.g. as reflected in the increased quantity of "unirradiated separated plutonium in product stores at reprocessing plants". Other, smaller, changes are because of the return of MOX fuel from Japan and a review of reporting categories for some of the plutonium inventories concerned. The latter has resulted in plutonium present as "work in progress" at reprocessing plants being split so that separated material in the plutonium finishing lines is reported in the category "unirradiated separated plutonium held elsewhere" along with small quantities of plutonium in material forms for which current plans envisage re-cycle via reprocessing but which is not in the form of spent fuel.