It is the beginning of the end at Sellafield’s Thorp plant as plans to change the use of the reprocessing facility are pushed through.

A major milestone in the company’s history was hit last week as Copeland Councillors approved plans for the plant to be used to store spent fuel once its current reprocessing contract comes to an end in November 2018.

And bosses have vowed to redeploy the 230 staff, whose contracts will finish, elsewhere on the nuclear site.

Work has already begun to make the change.

Of the 680 people who work at Thorp, around 450 will remain to continue working on the receipt and storage side.

A Sellafield Ltd spokesman said: “We do not envisage any forced redundancies as a result of the change of mission at Thorp.

“Although a number of roles will no longer be required when reprocessing ends, our aim is to reskill and retrain affected employees in order to mobilise them elsewhere in the company.”

Copeland Council’s planning panel approved the four applications – one for each pond in Thorp – for their change-of-use to interim storage of spent nuclear fuel.

Bosses have made it clear that the amount of fuel entering the plant will not be increased and it will be stored there until around 2085 when a permanent solution is found for the storage of the fuel.

Even though councillors approved the application, they did voice concerns over the lack of a permanent storage plan for the spent fuel.

Doug Wilson said: “It’s a big responsibility and there are community concerns as we don’t know when the long-term storage facility is available. We know some of the ponds have gone far beyond the timescale they were intended.”

Councillor Peter Connolly added: “I’m very worried that nobody is putting on pressure to find a permanent solution.”

The construction of Thorp was completed in 1994, and cost £2.8bn to build. It has dealt with more than 9,000 tonnes of fuel and generated £10bn worth of business for the UK, largely from Japanese and German customers.