The first and only commercial spent-fuel rod reprocessing plant in the USA was operated here briefly between 1966 and 1972 by Nuclear Fuel Services Inc., after which 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. Other radioactive waste has been glassified on site, a process that shields much of the radioactivity. This was done in a 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 Savannah River Site, in South Carolina. Some radioactive waste has been buried possibly permanently on site. West Valley is a Department of Energy site, where over a billion dollars has been spent on clean-up of the site so far.
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