Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a systematic approach to evaluating the total environmental impacts associated with providing products and services; it is increasingly seen as the basis for environmental legislation and regulation in the EU, including planning of solid waste management. The work to be discussed in this seminar appears to be the most complete application of LCA to the nuclear fuel cycle, carried out for BNFL, one objective being to compare reprocessing with single-pass use. The basis for the comparison (i.e. the Functional Unit in the terminology of LCA) is a given electrical power output. The study used primary data on the environmental and human health impacts of mining, and incorporated risk assessment to enable waste management and disposal to be included in the overall evaluation. It was also necessary to develop two impact categories new to LCA, to describe the effects of radionuclides on human health and on the environment. Although the results must be regarded as preliminary, reprocessing appears to reduce both radiological and non-radiological impacts, particularly in mining because reprocessing produces more electrical output from a given quantity of mined fuel. The identification of mining as a significant source of environmental and health impacts in the nuclear fuel cycle is perhaps one of the more surprising results from the study.