The first and only commercial spent-fuel rod reprocessing plant in the USA. Operated briefly between 1966 and 1972, by Nuclear Fuel Services Inc., the idea of reprocessing nuclear fuel in the United States was abandoned. Spent fuel rods sit in a pool of water, waiting for permanent disposal. The worst of the waste is being glassified on site, a process that shields much of the radioactivity. This is being done in an elaborate, 70-foot long hot cell, a shielded robot-operated industrial area, that glassifies and packs the waste into steel canisters. A similar operation takes place at the Department of Energy's Savanna River Site, in South Carolina. West Valley is a Department of Energy project, and over a billion dollars has been spent on clean-up of the site so far.