Sellafield
Encyclopedia
Sellafield is a nuclear reprocessing site, close to the village of Seascale
on the coast of the Irish Sea
in Cumbria
, England
. The site is served by Sellafield railway station
. Sellafield is an off-shoot from the original nuclear reactor site at Windscale which is currently undergoing decommissioning and dismantling. Calder Hall, another neighbour of Windscale is also undergoing decommissioning and dismantling of its 4 nuclear power generating reactors.
Sellafield was previously owned and operated by the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority
(UKAEA) and then, following the division of UKAEA in 1971, British Nuclear Fuels Ltd (BNFL
). However since 1 April 2005, it has been owned by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority
(NDA) and is now operated by Sellafield Ltd.
In 2008 the NDA contracted the management of Sellafield Ltd to Nuclear Management Partners, a consortium of US company URS
, British company AMEC
, and AREVA
of France. The initial contract is for five years, with extension options to 17 years.
Facilities at the site include the THORP nuclear fuel reprocessing plant and the Magnox
nuclear fuel reprocessing plant
. It is also the site of the remains of Calder Hall, the world's first commercial nuclear power station, now being decommissioned, as well as some other older nuclear facilities at Windscale.
Royal Ordnance Factory
, which, with its sister factory, ROF Drigg, at Drigg
, produced TNT. After the war, the Ministry of Supply
adapted the site to produce materials for nuclear weapon
s, principally plutonium
, and construction of the nuclear facilities commenced in 1947. The site was renamed Windscale to avoid confusion with the Springfields uranium processing factory near Preston. The two air-cooled, graphite
-moderated Windscale reactors constituted the first British weapons grade plutonium-239
production facility, built for the British nuclear weapons programme of the late 1940s and the 1950s. Windscale was also the site of the prototype British Advanced gas-cooled reactor
.
With the creation of the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority
(UKAEA) in 1954, ownership of Windscale Works passed to the UKAEA. The first of four Magnox
reactors became operational in 1956 at Calder Hall, adjacent to Windscale, and the site became Windscale and Calder Works. Following the breakup of the UKAEA into a research division (UKAEA) and a production division, British Nuclear Fuels Ltd (BNFL
) in 1971, the major part of the site was transferred to BNFL. In 1981 BNFL's Windscale and Calder Works was renamed Sellafield as part of a major reorganisation of the site, as well as to possibly attempt to disassociate the site from press reports about its safety. The remainder of the site remained in the hands of the UKAEA and was still called Windscale.
Since its inception as a nuclear facility Sellafield has also been host to a number of reprocessing operations, which separate the uranium
, plutonium, and fission products from spent nuclear fuel. The uranium can then be used in the manufacture of new nuclear fuel, or in applications where its density is an asset. The plutonium can be used in the manufacture of mixed oxide fuel (MOX
) for thermal reactor
s, or as fuel for fast breeder reactors, such as the Prototype Fast Reactor at Dounreay
. These processes, including the associated cooling ponds, require considerable amounts of water and the licence to extract water from Wast Water
, formerly held by BNFL, is now held by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority.
In February 2009, NuGeneration
(NuGen), a consortium of GDF Suez
, Iberdrola
and Scottish and Southern Energy (SSE), announced plans to build a new nuclear power station of up to 3.6GW capacity at Sellafield. In October 2009, NuGen purchased an option to acquire land around Sellafield from the NDA for £70m.
On 18 October 2010 the UK government announced that Sellafield was one of the eight sites it considered suitable for future nuclear power stations. On 23 June 2011, the government confirmed plans to build a new nuclear reactor at Sellafield, to be completed before 2025.
plant was being used to separate plutonium and uranium from spent fuel.
Unlike the early US
nuclear reactors at Hanford
, which consisted of a graphite
core cooled by water, the Windscale Piles consisted of a graphite core cooled by air. Each pile contained almost 2000 tonne
s (1,968 L/T
) of graphite, and measured over 7.3 metres (24 ft) high by 15.2 metres (50 ft) in diameter. Fuel for the reactor consisted of rods of uranium metal, approximately 30 centimetres (12 in) long by 2.5 centimetres (1 in) in diameter, and clad in aluminium
.
(20,000 curie
s) of radioactive material into the surrounding environment, including Iodine-131
, which is taken up in the human body by the thyroid
. As a precautionary measure, milk from surrounding farming areas was destroyed. Following the fire, Pile 1 was unserviceable, and Pile 2, although undamaged by the fire, was shut down as a precaution, by which time UK had enough plutonium for some atomic bombs and work was progressing well at the Fast Breeder Reactor at Dounreay
.
In the 1990s, the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority started to implement plans to decommission, disassemble and clean up both piles; the decommissioning is now partially complete. In 2004 Pile 1 still contained about 15 tonne
s (14.76 L/T
) of uranium fuel, and final completion of the decommissioning is not expected until at least 2037.
material for the UK's atomic weapons programme
, and for exchange with the United States
through the US-UK Mutual Defence Agreement. It operated from 1951 until 1964, with an annual capacity of 300 tonne
s (295 L/T
) of fuel, or 750 tonnes (738 L/T) of low burn-up fuel. Following the commissioning of the Magnox
reprocessing plant, it was itself recycled to become a pre-handling plant to allow oxide fuel to be reprocessed in the Magnox plant, and was closed in 1973.
Calder Hall was the world's first nuclear power station to deliver electricity in commercial quantities (although the 5 MWe "semi-experimental" reactor at Obninsk
in the Soviet Union
was connected to the public supply in 1954). The design was codenamed PIPPA (Pressurised Pile Producing Power and Plutonium) by the UKAEA to denote the plant's dual commercial and military role. Construction started in 1953. Calder Hall had four Magnox
reactors capable of generating 60 MWe (net) of power each, reduced to 50 MWe in 1973. The reactors were supplied by the UKAEA and the turbines by C.A. Parsons & Company. The civil engineering contractor was Taylor Woodrow Construction. First connection to the grid was on 27 August 1956, and the plant was officially opened by Queen Elizabeth II
on 17 October 1956. When the station closed on 31 March 2003, the first reactor had been in use for nearly 47 years.
In its early life, it was primarily used to produce weapons-grade plutonium, with two fuel loads per year, and electricity production as a secondary purpose. From 1964 it was mainly used on commercial fuel cycles; in April 1995 the UK Government announced that all production of plutonium for weapons purposes had ceased.
Demolition
The four cooling tower
s were demolished by controlled implosions on Saturday 29 September 2007, by Controlled Demolition Inc. A period of 12 weeks was required to remove asbestos in the towers' rubble.
stations. The WAGR golfball is, along with the pile chimneys, one of the iconic buildings on the Windscale site (Windscale being an independent site within the Sellafield complex). Construction was carried out by Mitchell Construction
and completed in 1962. This reactor was shut down in 1981, and is now part of a pilot project to demonstrate techniques for safely decommissioning a nuclear reactor.
reprocessing plant came on stream to reprocess spent nuclear fuel from the Magnox reactors. The plant uses the "plutonium uranium extraction" Purex
method for reprocessing spent fuel, with tributyl phosphate
as an extraction agent. The Purex process produces uranium, plutonium and fission products as output streams. Over the 30 years from 1971 to 2001 B205
has reprocessed over 35,000 tonnes of Magnox fuel, with 15,000 tonnes of fuel being regenerated. Magnox fuel is reprocessed since it corrodes if stored underwater, and routes for dry storage have not yet been proven.
s of radioactive waste
was discovered to have leaked in the Thorp reprocessing plant from a cracked pipe into a huge stainless steel
-lined concrete
sump
chamber built to contain leaks.
A discrepancy between the amount of material entering and exiting the Thorp processing system had first been noted in August 2004. Operations staff, however, did not discover the leak until safeguards staff reported the discrepancies. Some 19 tonne
s of uranium and 160 kilograms of plutonium dissolved in nitric acid
has been pumped from the sump vessel into a holding tank.
No radiation was released to the environment, and no one was injured by the incident, but because of the large escape of radioactivity to the secondary containment the incident was given an International Nuclear Event Scale
level 3 categorisation. Sellafield Limited was fined £500,000 for breaching health and safety law. In January 2007 Sellafield was given consent to restart THORP.
The plant has three process lines and is based on the French AVM procedure. Principal item is an inductively heated melting furnace, in which the calcined waste is merged with glass frit (glass beads of 1 to 2 mm in diameter). The melt is placed into waste containers, which are welded shut, their outsides decontaminated and then brought into air-cooled storage facilities. This storage consists of 800 vertical storage tubes, each capable of storing ten containers. The total storage capacity is 8000 containers, and 5000 containers have been stored to 2010.
Vitrification should ensure safe storage of waste in the UK for the middle to long term.
Plant (SMP) was completed in 1997, though justification for the operation of the plant was not achieved until October 2001. Mixed oxide, or MOX fuel, is a blend of plutonium and natural uranium
or depleted uranium
which behaves similarly (though not identically) to the enriched uranium
feed for which most nuclear reactors were designed. MOX fuel is an alternative to low enriched uranium (LEU) fuel used in the light water reactor
s which predominate in nuclear power generation. MOX also provides a means of using excess weapons-grade plutonium (from military sources) to produce electricity.
Designed with a plant capacity of 120 tonnes/year, it achieved a total output of only 5 tonnes during its first five years of operation. In 2008 orders for the plant had to be fulfilled at COGEMA
in France, and the plant was reported in the media as "failed" with a total build and operation cost of £1.2 billion.
On 12 May 2010 an agreement was reached with existing Japanese customers on future MOX supplies. In July 2010 Areva
was contracted to design and supply a new rod line to improve reliability and production rate.
On 3 August 2011 the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority
announced that the MOX Plant would close, due to the loss of Japanese orders following the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster
.
into the sea, using a flocculation
process to remove radioactivity from liquid effluent before discharge. Metals dissolved in acidic effluents produced a metal hydroxide flocculant precipitate
following the addition of ammonium hydroxide
. The suspension was then transferred to settling tanks where the precipitate would settle out, and the remaining clarified liquid, or supernate, would be discharged to the sea. In 1994 the Enhanced Actinide Removal Plant (EARP) was opened. In EARP the effectiveness of the process is enhanced by the addition of reagents to remove the remaining soluble radioactive species. EARP has recently (2004) been enhanced to further reduce the quantities of Technetium-99
released to the environment.
The UK's main Low Level Waste Repository
is 6 kilometres (3.7 mi) south east of Sellafield at Drigg
.
gas-fired power station near the Sellafield site, which it supplies with steam and heat. It is run as Fellside Heat and Power Ltd, is wholly owned by Sellafield Ltd and is managed by PX Ltd and Doosan Babcock
. It was built in 1993, being originally equally owned by BNFL
and Scottish Hydro Electric
(which became Scottish and Southern Energy in December 1998). The station uses three General Electric
Frame 6001B gas turbine
s, with power entering the National Grid via a 132kV transformer
. BNFL bought SSE's 50% share in January 2002.
), with approximately 90% of the employees coming from West Cumbria. Because of the increase in local unemployment following any run down of Sellafield operations, the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (and HMG) is concerned that this needs to be managed.
Formerly the Sellafield Visitors' Centre, it is now the Business and Information Centre and is open Mon - Fri only. The centre is used for business events such as supplier forums and 'Meet the Buyer' events. It is still open to the public but only at selected times.
At its peak, the Visitors' Centre attracted an average of 1,000 people per day. In recent years, its popularity has deteriorated, prompting the change from tourist attraction to conference facility.
in the US and Europe, there has also been general scepticism of the nuclear industry. In part this has not been helped by the industry's early connections to the nuclear weapons programme.
, one at level 5, five at level 4 and fifteen at level 3. Additionally during the 1950s and 1960s there were protracted periods of known, deliberate, discharges to the atmosphere of plutonium and irradiated uranium oxide
particulates. These frequent incidents, together with the large 2005 Thorp plant leak which was not detected for nine months, have led some to doubt the effectiveness of the managerial processes and safety culture on the site over the years.
In the effort to build an independent British nuclear weapon
in the 1940s and 1950s, the Sellafield plant was constructed; diluted radioactive waste discharged by pipeline into the Irish Sea
. Some claim that the Irish Sea remains one of the most heavily contaminated seas in the world because of these discharges. The Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment of the North-East Atlantic
(OSPAR Convention) reports an estimated 200 kilograms (441 lb
) of plutonium has been deposited in the marine sediments of the Irish Sea. Cattle and fish in the area are contaminated with plutonium-239 and caesium-137
from these sediments and from other sources such as the radioactive rain that fell on the area after the Chernobyl disaster
. Most of the area's long-lived radioactive technetium
comes from the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel at the Sellafield facility.
Technetium-99 is a radioactive element which is produced by nuclear fuel reprocessing, and also as a by-product of medical facilities (for example Ireland
is responsible for the discharge of approximately 6.78 gigabecquerels
of technetium-99 each year despite not having a nuclear industry).
Because it is almost uniquely produced by nuclear fuel reprocessing, technetium-99 is an important element as part of the OSPAR Convention since it provides a good tracer for discharges into the sea.
In itself, the technetium discharges do not represent a significant radiological hazard, and recent studies have noted "...that in the most recently reported dose estimates for the most exposed Sellafield group of seafood consumers (FSA
/SEPA
2000), the contributions from Technetium-99 and actinide
nuclides from Sellafield (<100 µSv
) was less than that from 210Po
attributable to discharges from the Whitehaven
phosphate
processing plant and probably less than the dose from naturally occurring background levels of 210Po." Because of the need to comply with the OSPAR Convention, British Nuclear Group
(the licensing company for Sellafield) have recently commissioned a new process in which technetium-99 is removed from the waste stream and vitrified in glass blocks.
Discharges into the sea of radioactive effluents - mainly caesium-137
- from the Magnox reprocessing plant's storage pond amounted to TBq
during the peak year, 1975.
There has been concern that the Sellafield area will become a major dumping ground for unwanted nuclear material, since there are currently no long-term facilities for storing High-Level Waste
(HLW), although the UK has current contracts to reprocess spent fuel from all over the world. However, contracts signed since 1976 between BNFL
and overseas customers require that all HLW be returned to the country of origin. The UK retains low- and intermediate-level waste resulting from its reprocessing activity, and instead ships out a radiologically equivalent amount of its own HLW. This substitution policy is intended to be environmentally neutral and to speed return of overseas material by reducing the number of shipments required, since HLW is far less bulky.
1983 was the year of the "Beach Discharge Incident" in which high radioactive discharges containing ruthenium
and rhodium 106
, both beta
-emitting isotopes, resulted in the closure of beaches along a 10-mile stretch of coast between St. Bees and Eskmeals, along with warnings against swimming in the sea.
BNFL received a fine of £10,000 for this discharge. 1983 was also the year in which Yorkshire Television
produced a documentary "Windscale: The Nuclear Laundry", which claimed that the low levels of radioactivity that are associated with waste streams from nuclear plants such as Sellafield did pose a non-negligible risk.
It is impossible to determine exactly how much radioactive waste is stored in B30; algae is forming in the pool, making visual examinations difficult. British authorities have not been able to provide the Euratom inspectors with precise data. The European Commission has thus sued Great Britain in the European Court of Justice. There are expected to be about 1.3 tons of plutonium, 400 kg of which are in mud sediments. It is thought the pool also contains waste from the Tokai Mura plant (Japan).
Radiation around the pool can get so high that a person is not allowed to stay more than 2 minutes, seriously affecting decommissioning. The pool is not watertight, time and weather have created cracks in the concrete, letting contaminated water leak.
revealed that official documents showed that during the 1960s volunteer workers at Sellafield had participated in secret Cold War
experiments to assess the biological effect of exposure to radioactive substances, such as from ingesting caesium-134.
The inquiry final report was published in November 2010, reporting that "...body parts had been removed between 1961 and 1992. The deaths of 76 workers – 64 from Sellafield and 12 from other UK nuclear plants – were examined, although the scope of the inquiry was later significantly widened." The person behind this scheme was Dr Geoffrey Schofield, who became BNFL’s Company Chief Medical Officer, and who died in 1985. Sellafield staff did not breach any legal obligation, did not consider their actions untoward, and published the scientific information obtained in peer-reviewed scientific journals. It was the hospital pathologists, who were profoundly ignorant of the law, who breached the Human Tissue Act 1961 by giving Sellafield human organs, without any consents, under an informal arrangement.
, the British Government has been "at pains over the years to play down attempts to correlate cancer
s with Sellafield radioactivity, particularly when it involves individuals living near the plant but not working at it".
In 1983, the Medical Officer of West Cumbria announced that cancer fatality rates were actually lower around the nuclear plant than elsewhere in Great Britain. In the early 1990s, concern was raised in the UK about apparent clusters of leukaemia near nuclear facilities.
A 1997 Ministry of Health report stated that children living close to Sellafield had twice as much plutonium in their teeth as children living more than 100 miles (160.9 km) away. Health Minister Melanie Johnson
said the quantities were minute and "presented no risk to public health". The University of Dundee
's Professor Eric Wright, a leading expert on blood disorders, challenged this claim, saying that even microscopic amounts of the man-made element might cause cancer.
Detailed studies carried out by the Committee on Medical Aspects of Radiation in the Environment (COMARE) in 2003 reported no evidence of raised childhood cancer in general around nuclear power plants, but did report an excess of leukaemia
(cancer of the blood or bone) and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL) (blood cancer) near nuclear plants including Sellafield, AWE
Burghfield
and UKAEA Dounreay
.
COMARE's opinion is that "the excesses around Sellafield and Dounreay are unlikely to be due to chance, although there is not at present a convincing explanation for them". In earlier reports COMARE had suggested that "..no single factor could account for the excess of leukaemia and NHL but that a mechanism involving infection may be a significant factor affecting the risk of leukaemia and NHL in young people in Seascale."
, with the Irish Government
and some members of the population concerned at the risk that such a facility may pose to the country. The Irish government has made formal complaints about the facility, and recently came to a friendly agreement with the British Government about the matter, as part of which the Radiological Protection Institute of Ireland
and An Garda Síochána (Irish Police Force) are now allowed access to the site. However, Irish government policy remains that of seeking the closure of the facility.
government since 1997. Monitoring undertaken by the Norwegian Radiation Protection Authority has shown that the prevailing sea currents transport radioactive materials leaked into the sea at Sellafield along the entire coast of Norway and water samples have shown up to ten-fold increases in such materials as Technetium-99. Fears for the reputation of Norwegian fish as a safe food product have been a concern of the country's fishing industry, though the radiation levels have not been conclusively proved as dangerous for the fish. The Norwegian government is also seeking closure of the facility.
, Germany
and Japan
.
In 1999 it was discovered that the plant's staff had been falsifying some quality assurance data since 1996. A Nuclear Installations Inspectorate (NII) investigation concluded four of the five work-shifts were involved in the falsification, though only one worker admitted to falsifying data, and that "the level of control and supervision ... had been virtually non existent.". The NII stated that the safety performance of the fuel was not affected as there was also a primary automated check on the fuel. Nevertheless "in a plant with the proper safety culture, the events described in this report could not have happened" and there were systematic failures in management.
BNFL had to pay compensation to the Japanese customer, Kansai Electric, and take back a flawed shipment of MOX fuel from Japan. BNFL's Chief Executive John Taylor resigned, after initially resisting resignation when the NII's damning report was published.
, described this as a discrepancy in paper records and not as indicating any physical loss of material. They pointed out that the error amounted to about 0.5%, whereas International Atomic Energy Agency
regulations permit a discrepancy up to 1% as the amount of plutonium recovered from the reprocessing process never precisely matches the pre-process estimates. The inventories in question were accepted as satisfactory by Euratom, the relevant regulatory agency.
of £500m, by 2003 it had made losses of over £1bn. Subsequently Thorp was closed for almost two years from 2005, after a leak had been undetected for 9 months. Production eventually restarted at the plant in early 2008; but almost immediately had to be put on hold again, for an underwater lift that takes the fuel for reprocessing to be repaired.
In November 2008 Sellafield was taken over by a new US-led consortium (US company URS Corp.
, French firm Areva
and the UK company Amec
) for decommissioning, as part of a 5-year £6.5bn contract. In October 2008 it was revealed that the British government had agreed to issue Sellafield an unlimited indemnity against future accidents; according to The Guardian
, "the indemnity even covers accidents and leaks that are the consortium's fault." The indemnity had been rushed through prior to the summer parliamentary recess without notifying parliament.
gas added to prevent fires.
In 2009 Sellafield decommissioning accounts for 40% of the budget of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority - over £1.1bn. Sellafield decommissioning and waste disposal is expected to cost the taxpayer £1.5bn per year for many years.
's 1991 remix of their 1975 song Radioactivity
mentions Sellafield together with Chernobyl
, Hiroshima
and Harrisburg
, other known places of nuclear radiation disasters.
In 1992, rock bands U2
, Public Enemy, Big Audio Dynamite II, and Kraftwerk
held a "Stop Sellafield" concert for Greenpeace
to protest against the nuclear factory. Stop Sellafield: The Concert was later released that year on VHS in the UK, and all proceeds went directly to Greenpeace.
U2's performance from the "Stop Sellafield" concert was held during their Zoo TV Tour
on 19 June 1992 at the G-Mex Centre in Manchester, England. Two tracks from the concert, "The Fly
" and "Even Better Than the Real Thing
", were later released on the band's "City of Blinding Lights
" CD single and on the Zoo TV: Live from Sydney
DVD.
Since 1992, German band Kraftwerk has introduced their song "Radioactivity" in their live shows with a video clip criticizing the Sellafield-2 reactor for radiation released into the atmosphere during typical operation and the dangers of reprocessing plutonium in regard to nuclear proliferation
:
This introduction can be heard on their 2005 live album
and DVD Minimum-Maximum
. Sellafield-2 was the name given by environmental groups including Greenpeace to a proposed second plant to reprocess oxide fuel (it is not obvious how seriously proposed, a public enquiry was never opened).
The Irish folk musician, Derek Warfield
, wrote a song critical of Sellafield, "Sellafield Tiocfaidh Ar La", which was included in his 2001 album, Slan Abahile.
, a programme shown in 2006 on the Irish national TV station RTÉ, was a documentary-style drama showing the possible effects of a serious accident at Sellafield. The programme highlighted the fact that an accident could cause long scale contamination of Ireland's most densely populated areas, including its capital city, Dublin.
Sellafield was the subject of Marilynne Robinson's
1989 book, Mother Country, a critique of British nuclear policy.
Seascale
Seascale is a village and civil parish on the Irish Sea coast of Cumbria in north-west England.-History:The place-name indicates that it was inhabited by Norse settlers, probably before 1000 AD. It is derived from skali, meaning in Norse a wooden hut or shelter...
on the coast of the Irish Sea
Irish Sea
The Irish Sea separates the islands of Ireland and Great Britain. It is connected to the Celtic Sea in the south by St George's Channel, and to the Atlantic Ocean in the north by the North Channel. Anglesey is the largest island within the Irish Sea, followed by the Isle of Man...
in Cumbria
Cumbria
Cumbria , is a non-metropolitan county in North West England. The county and Cumbria County Council, its local authority, came into existence in 1974 after the passage of the Local Government Act 1972. Cumbria's largest settlement and county town is Carlisle. It consists of six districts, and in...
, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
. The site is served by Sellafield railway station
Sellafield railway station
Sellafield railway station serves the nuclear facility of Sellafield in Cumbria, England. The railway station is a stop on the scenic Cumbrian Coast Line. Some through trains to the Furness Line stop here...
. Sellafield is an off-shoot from the original nuclear reactor site at Windscale which is currently undergoing decommissioning and dismantling. Calder Hall, another neighbour of Windscale is also undergoing decommissioning and dismantling of its 4 nuclear power generating reactors.
Ownership and facilities
United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority
The United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority is a UK government research organisation responsible for the development of nuclear fusion power. It is an executive non-departmental public body of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and was formerly chaired by Lady Barbara Judge CBE...
(UKAEA) and then, following the division of UKAEA in 1971, British Nuclear Fuels Ltd (BNFL
BNFL
British Nuclear Fuels Limited was a nuclear energy and fuels company owned by the UK Government. It was a former manufacturer and transporter of nuclear fuel , ran reactors, generated and sold electricity, reprocessed and managed spent fuel , and decommissioned nuclear plants and other similar...
). However since 1 April 2005, it has been owned by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority
Nuclear Decommissioning Authority
The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority is a non-departmental public body of the United Kingdom formed by the Energy Act 2004. It came into existence in late 2004, and took on its main functions on 1 April 2005...
(NDA) and is now operated by Sellafield Ltd.
In 2008 the NDA contracted the management of Sellafield Ltd to Nuclear Management Partners, a consortium of US company URS
URS Corp.
URS Corporation is an engineering design firm and a U.S. federal government contractor. Headquartered in San Francisco, California, URS is a full-service, global organization with offices located in the Americas, Europe and Asia-Pacific.-History:...
, British company AMEC
AMEC
AMEC plc is a global consultancy, engineering and project management company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is focused on the oil and gas, minerals and metals, renewable energy, environment and infrastructure sectors and has offices in 40 countries worldwide...
, and AREVA
Areva
AREVA is a French public multinational industrial conglomerate headquartered in the Tour Areva in Courbevoie, Paris. AREVA is mainly known for nuclear power; it also has interests in other energy projects. It was created on 3 September 2001, by the merger of Framatome , Cogema and...
of France. The initial contract is for five years, with extension options to 17 years.
Facilities at the site include the THORP nuclear fuel reprocessing plant and the Magnox
Magnox
Magnox is a now obsolete type of nuclear power reactor which was designed and is still in use in the United Kingdom, and was exported to other countries, both as a power plant, and, when operated accordingly, as a producer of plutonium for nuclear weapons...
nuclear fuel reprocessing plant
Nuclear reprocessing
Nuclear reprocessing technology was developed to chemically separate and recover fissionable plutonium from irradiated nuclear fuel. Reprocessing serves multiple purposes, whose relative importance has changed over time. Originally reprocessing was used solely to extract plutonium for producing...
. It is also the site of the remains of Calder Hall, the world's first commercial nuclear power station, now being decommissioned, as well as some other older nuclear facilities at Windscale.
History
The Sellafield site was originally occupied by ROF Sellafield, a Second World WarWorld War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
Royal Ordnance Factory
Royal Ordnance Factory
Royal Ordnance Factories was the collective name of the UK government's munitions factories in and after World War II. Until privatisation in 1987 they were the responsibility of the Ministry of Supply and later the Ministry of Defence....
, which, with its sister factory, ROF Drigg, at Drigg
Drigg
Drigg is a village situated in the civil parish of Drigg and Carleton on the West Cumbria coast of the Irish Sea and on the boundary of the Lake District National Park in the county of Cumbria, England....
, produced TNT. After the war, the Ministry of Supply
Ministry of Supply
The Ministry of Supply was a department of the UK Government formed in 1939 to co-ordinate the supply of equipment to all three British armed forces, headed by the Minister of Supply. There was, however, a separate ministry responsible for aircraft production and the Admiralty retained...
adapted the site to produce materials for nuclear weapon
Nuclear weapon
A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission or a combination of fission and fusion. Both reactions release vast quantities of energy from relatively small amounts of matter. The first fission bomb test released the same amount...
s, principally plutonium
Plutonium
Plutonium is a transuranic radioactive chemical element with the chemical symbol Pu and atomic number 94. It is an actinide metal of silvery-gray appearance that tarnishes when exposed to air, forming a dull coating when oxidized. The element normally exhibits six allotropes and four oxidation...
, and construction of the nuclear facilities commenced in 1947. The site was renamed Windscale to avoid confusion with the Springfields uranium processing factory near Preston. The two air-cooled, graphite
Graphite
The mineral graphite is one of the allotropes of carbon. It was named by Abraham Gottlob Werner in 1789 from the Ancient Greek γράφω , "to draw/write", for its use in pencils, where it is commonly called lead . Unlike diamond , graphite is an electrical conductor, a semimetal...
-moderated Windscale reactors constituted the first British weapons grade plutonium-239
Plutonium-239
Plutonium-239 is an isotope of plutonium. Plutonium-239 is the primary fissile isotope used for the production of nuclear weapons, although uranium-235 has also been used and is currently the secondary isotope. Plutonium-239 is also one of the three main isotopes demonstrated usable as fuel in...
production facility, built for the British nuclear weapons programme of the late 1940s and the 1950s. Windscale was also the site of the prototype British Advanced gas-cooled reactor
Advanced gas-cooled reactor
An advanced gas-cooled reactor is a type of nuclear reactor. These are the second generation of British gas-cooled reactors, using graphite as the neutron moderator and carbon dioxide as coolant...
.
With the creation of the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority
United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority
The United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority is a UK government research organisation responsible for the development of nuclear fusion power. It is an executive non-departmental public body of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and was formerly chaired by Lady Barbara Judge CBE...
(UKAEA) in 1954, ownership of Windscale Works passed to the UKAEA. The first of four Magnox
Magnox
Magnox is a now obsolete type of nuclear power reactor which was designed and is still in use in the United Kingdom, and was exported to other countries, both as a power plant, and, when operated accordingly, as a producer of plutonium for nuclear weapons...
reactors became operational in 1956 at Calder Hall, adjacent to Windscale, and the site became Windscale and Calder Works. Following the breakup of the UKAEA into a research division (UKAEA) and a production division, British Nuclear Fuels Ltd (BNFL
BNFL
British Nuclear Fuels Limited was a nuclear energy and fuels company owned by the UK Government. It was a former manufacturer and transporter of nuclear fuel , ran reactors, generated and sold electricity, reprocessed and managed spent fuel , and decommissioned nuclear plants and other similar...
) in 1971, the major part of the site was transferred to BNFL. In 1981 BNFL's Windscale and Calder Works was renamed Sellafield as part of a major reorganisation of the site, as well as to possibly attempt to disassociate the site from press reports about its safety. The remainder of the site remained in the hands of the UKAEA and was still called Windscale.
Since its inception as a nuclear facility Sellafield has also been host to a number of reprocessing operations, which separate the uranium
Uranium
Uranium is a silvery-white metallic chemical element in the actinide series of the periodic table, with atomic number 92. It is assigned the chemical symbol U. A uranium atom has 92 protons and 92 electrons, of which 6 are valence electrons...
, plutonium, and fission products from spent nuclear fuel. The uranium can then be used in the manufacture of new nuclear fuel, or in applications where its density is an asset. The plutonium can be used in the manufacture of mixed oxide fuel (MOX
MOX fuel
Mixed oxide fuel, commonly referred to as MOX fuel, is nuclear fuel that contains more than one oxide of fissile material. MOX fuel contains plutonium blended with natural uranium, reprocessed uranium, or depleted uranium. MOX fuel is an alternative to the low-enriched uranium fuel used in the...
) for thermal reactor
Thermal reactor
A thermal reactor is a nuclear reactor that uses slow or thermal neutrons. Most power reactors are of this type. These type of reactors use a neutron moderator to slow neutrons until they approach the average kinetic energy of the surrounding particles, that is, to reduce the speed of the neutrons...
s, or as fuel for fast breeder reactors, such as the Prototype Fast Reactor at Dounreay
Dounreay
Dounreay is the site of several nuclear research establishments located on the north coast of Caithness, in the Highland area of Scotland...
. These processes, including the associated cooling ponds, require considerable amounts of water and the licence to extract water from Wast Water
Wast Water
Wast Water or Wastwater is a lake located in Wasdale, a valley in the western part of the Lake District National Park, England. The lake is approximately 4.6 kilometres long and 600 metres wide. It is the deepest lake in England at 79 metres , and is owned by the National Trust...
, formerly held by BNFL, is now held by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority.
In February 2009, NuGeneration
NuGeneration
NuGeneration is a company with plans to build a new nuclear power station on the Sellafield site in the United Kingdom.NuGen was establised in February 2009 as a joint venture between GDF Suez, Iberdrola and Scottish and Southern Energy...
(NuGen), a consortium of GDF Suez
GDF Suez
GDF Suez S.A. is a French multinational energy company which operates in the fields of electricity generation and distribution, natural gas and renewable energy. The world's largest utility after taking control of Britain's International Power, the company was initially formed by the merger of Gaz...
, Iberdrola
Iberdrola
Iberdrola , headquartered in Bilbao, is a private utility with a global footprint and over 150 years of experience...
and Scottish and Southern Energy (SSE), announced plans to build a new nuclear power station of up to 3.6GW capacity at Sellafield. In October 2009, NuGen purchased an option to acquire land around Sellafield from the NDA for £70m.
On 18 October 2010 the UK government announced that Sellafield was one of the eight sites it considered suitable for future nuclear power stations. On 23 June 2011, the government confirmed plans to build a new nuclear reactor at Sellafield, to be completed before 2025.
The Windscale Piles
Following the decision taken by the British government in January 1947 to develop nuclear weapons, Sellafield was chosen as the location of the plutonium production plant, with the initial fuel loading into the Windscale Piles commencing in July 1950. By July 1952 the separationIsotope separation
Isotope separation is the process of concentrating specific isotopes of a chemical element by removing other isotopes, for example separating natural uranium into enriched uranium and depleted uranium. This is a crucial process in the manufacture of uranium fuel for nuclear power stations, and is...
plant was being used to separate plutonium and uranium from spent fuel.
Unlike the early US
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
nuclear reactors at Hanford
Hanford Site
The Hanford Site is a mostly decommissioned nuclear production complex on the Columbia River in the U.S. state of Washington, operated by the United States federal government. The site has been known by many names, including Hanford Works, Hanford Engineer Works or HEW, Hanford Nuclear Reservation...
, which consisted of a graphite
Graphite
The mineral graphite is one of the allotropes of carbon. It was named by Abraham Gottlob Werner in 1789 from the Ancient Greek γράφω , "to draw/write", for its use in pencils, where it is commonly called lead . Unlike diamond , graphite is an electrical conductor, a semimetal...
core cooled by water, the Windscale Piles consisted of a graphite core cooled by air. Each pile contained almost 2000 tonne
Tonne
The tonne, known as the metric ton in the US , often put pleonastically as "metric tonne" to avoid confusion with ton, is a metric system unit of mass equal to 1000 kilograms. The tonne is not an International System of Units unit, but is accepted for use with the SI...
s (1,968 L/T
Long ton
Long ton is the name for the unit called the "ton" in the avoirdupois or Imperial system of measurements, as used in the United Kingdom and several other Commonwealth countries. It has been mostly replaced by the tonne, and in the United States by the short ton...
) of graphite, and measured over 7.3 metres (24 ft) high by 15.2 metres (50 ft) in diameter. Fuel for the reactor consisted of rods of uranium metal, approximately 30 centimetres (12 in) long by 2.5 centimetres (1 in) in diameter, and clad in aluminium
Aluminium
Aluminium or aluminum is a silvery white member of the boron group of chemical elements. It has the symbol Al, and its atomic number is 13. It is not soluble in water under normal circumstances....
.
The Windscale fire
The Windscale Piles were shut down following a fire in Pile 1 on 10 October 1957 which destroyed the core and released an estimated 750 terabecquerelsBecquerel
The becquerel is the SI-derived unit of radioactivity. One Bq is defined as the activity of a quantity of radioactive material in which one nucleus decays per second. The Bq unit is therefore equivalent to an inverse second, s−1...
(20,000 curie
Curie
The curie is a unit of radioactivity, defined asThis is roughly the activity of 1 gram of the radium isotope 226Ra, a substance studied by the pioneers of radiology, Marie and Pierre Curie, for whom the unit was named. In addition to the curie, activity can be measured using an SI derived unit,...
s) of radioactive material into the surrounding environment, including Iodine-131
Iodine-131
Iodine-131 , also called radioiodine , is an important radioisotope of iodine. It has a radioactive decay half-life of about eight days. Its uses are mostly medical and pharmaceutical...
, which is taken up in the human body by the thyroid
Thyroid
The thyroid gland or simply, the thyroid , in vertebrate anatomy, is one of the largest endocrine glands. The thyroid gland is found in the neck, below the thyroid cartilage...
. As a precautionary measure, milk from surrounding farming areas was destroyed. Following the fire, Pile 1 was unserviceable, and Pile 2, although undamaged by the fire, was shut down as a precaution, by which time UK had enough plutonium for some atomic bombs and work was progressing well at the Fast Breeder Reactor at Dounreay
Dounreay
Dounreay is the site of several nuclear research establishments located on the north coast of Caithness, in the Highland area of Scotland...
.
In the 1990s, the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority started to implement plans to decommission, disassemble and clean up both piles; the decommissioning is now partially complete. In 2004 Pile 1 still contained about 15 tonne
Tonne
The tonne, known as the metric ton in the US , often put pleonastically as "metric tonne" to avoid confusion with ton, is a metric system unit of mass equal to 1000 kilograms. The tonne is not an International System of Units unit, but is accepted for use with the SI...
s (14.76 L/T
Long ton
Long ton is the name for the unit called the "ton" in the avoirdupois or Imperial system of measurements, as used in the United Kingdom and several other Commonwealth countries. It has been mostly replaced by the tonne, and in the United States by the short ton...
) of uranium fuel, and final completion of the decommissioning is not expected until at least 2037.
The first generation reprocessing plant
The first generation reprocessing plant was built to extract the plutonium from spent fuel to provide fissileFissile
In nuclear engineering, a fissile material is one that is capable of sustaining a chain reaction of nuclear fission. By definition, fissile materials can sustain a chain reaction with neutrons of any energy. The predominant neutron energy may be typified by either slow neutrons or fast neutrons...
material for the UK's atomic weapons programme
Nuclear weapons and the United Kingdom
The United Kingdom was the third country to test an independently developed nuclear weapon, in October 1952. It is one of the five "Nuclear Weapons States" under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which the UK ratified in 1968...
, and for exchange with the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
through the US-UK Mutual Defence Agreement. It operated from 1951 until 1964, with an annual capacity of 300 tonne
Tonne
The tonne, known as the metric ton in the US , often put pleonastically as "metric tonne" to avoid confusion with ton, is a metric system unit of mass equal to 1000 kilograms. The tonne is not an International System of Units unit, but is accepted for use with the SI...
s (295 L/T
Long ton
Long ton is the name for the unit called the "ton" in the avoirdupois or Imperial system of measurements, as used in the United Kingdom and several other Commonwealth countries. It has been mostly replaced by the tonne, and in the United States by the short ton...
) of fuel, or 750 tonnes (738 L/T) of low burn-up fuel. Following the commissioning of the Magnox
Magnox
Magnox is a now obsolete type of nuclear power reactor which was designed and is still in use in the United Kingdom, and was exported to other countries, both as a power plant, and, when operated accordingly, as a producer of plutonium for nuclear weapons...
reprocessing plant, it was itself recycled to become a pre-handling plant to allow oxide fuel to be reprocessed in the Magnox plant, and was closed in 1973.
Calder Hall nuclear power station
Obninsk Nuclear Power Plant
Obninsk Nuclear Power Station, , was built in the "Science City" of Obninsk, about 110 km southwest of Moscow. It was the first civilian nuclear power station in the world...
in the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
was connected to the public supply in 1954). The design was codenamed PIPPA (Pressurised Pile Producing Power and Plutonium) by the UKAEA to denote the plant's dual commercial and military role. Construction started in 1953. Calder Hall had four Magnox
Magnox
Magnox is a now obsolete type of nuclear power reactor which was designed and is still in use in the United Kingdom, and was exported to other countries, both as a power plant, and, when operated accordingly, as a producer of plutonium for nuclear weapons...
reactors capable of generating 60 MWe (net) of power each, reduced to 50 MWe in 1973. The reactors were supplied by the UKAEA and the turbines by C.A. Parsons & Company. The civil engineering contractor was Taylor Woodrow Construction. First connection to the grid was on 27 August 1956, and the plant was officially opened by Queen Elizabeth II
Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom
Elizabeth II is the constitutional monarch of 16 sovereign states known as the Commonwealth realms: the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Jamaica, Barbados, the Bahamas, Grenada, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Belize,...
on 17 October 1956. When the station closed on 31 March 2003, the first reactor had been in use for nearly 47 years.
In its early life, it was primarily used to produce weapons-grade plutonium, with two fuel loads per year, and electricity production as a secondary purpose. From 1964 it was mainly used on commercial fuel cycles; in April 1995 the UK Government announced that all production of plutonium for weapons purposes had ceased.
Cooling towers of Calder Hall
Calder Hall had four cooling towers, built in 1950-1956 to cool the water from the station. The towers were 88 metres in height and used the natural draught hyperboloid design. The towers stood for 47 years, creating a landmark visible from the village of Seascale. Conflict arose over renovating Calder Hall and preserving the towers, but costs effectively defeated all attempts to do so.Demolition
The four cooling tower
Cooling tower
Cooling towers are heat removal devices used to transfer process waste heat to the atmosphere. Cooling towers may either use the evaporation of water to remove process heat and cool the working fluid to near the wet-bulb air temperature or in the case of closed circuit dry cooling towers rely...
s were demolished by controlled implosions on Saturday 29 September 2007, by Controlled Demolition Inc. A period of 12 weeks was required to remove asbestos in the towers' rubble.
Windscale Advanced Gas Cooled Reactor (WAGR)
The Windscale Advanced Gas Cooled Reactor (WAGR) was a prototype for the UK's second generation of reactors, the advanced gas-cooled reactor or AGR, which followed on from the MagnoxMagnox
Magnox is a now obsolete type of nuclear power reactor which was designed and is still in use in the United Kingdom, and was exported to other countries, both as a power plant, and, when operated accordingly, as a producer of plutonium for nuclear weapons...
stations. The WAGR golfball is, along with the pile chimneys, one of the iconic buildings on the Windscale site (Windscale being an independent site within the Sellafield complex). Construction was carried out by Mitchell Construction
Mitchell Construction
Mitchell Construction was once a leading British civil engineering business based in Peterborough.-History:The business was founded by F.G. Mitchell in London in 1933 as an offshoot of Mitchell Engineering, his engineering business. In 1940 the Company moved to Peterborough because of the...
and completed in 1962. This reactor was shut down in 1981, and is now part of a pilot project to demonstrate techniques for safely decommissioning a nuclear reactor.
Magnox reprocessing plant
In 1964 the MagnoxMagnox
Magnox is a now obsolete type of nuclear power reactor which was designed and is still in use in the United Kingdom, and was exported to other countries, both as a power plant, and, when operated accordingly, as a producer of plutonium for nuclear weapons...
reprocessing plant came on stream to reprocess spent nuclear fuel from the Magnox reactors. The plant uses the "plutonium uranium extraction" Purex
PUREX
PUREX is an acronym standing for Plutonium - URanium EXtraction — de facto standard aqueous nuclear reprocessing method for the recovery of uranium and plutonium from used nuclear fuel. It is based on liquid-liquid extraction ion-exchange.The PUREX process was invented by Herbert H. Anderson and...
method for reprocessing spent fuel, with tributyl phosphate
Tributyl phosphate
Tributyl phosphate, known commonly as TBP, is an organophosphorus compound with the formula 3PO. This colourless, odorless liquid finds some applications as an extractant and a plasticizer. It is an ester of orthophosphoric acid with n-butanol.- Production :Tributyl phosphate is manufactured by...
as an extraction agent. The Purex process produces uranium, plutonium and fission products as output streams. Over the 30 years from 1971 to 2001 B205
B205
B205 is the name of the Magnox nuclear reprocessing plant at Sellafield in northern England. This plant uses PUREX chemistry to extract plutonium and uranium from used nuclear fuel....
has reprocessed over 35,000 tonnes of Magnox fuel, with 15,000 tonnes of fuel being regenerated. Magnox fuel is reprocessed since it corrodes if stored underwater, and routes for dry storage have not yet been proven.
Thermal Oxide Reprocessing Plant
Between 1977 and 1978 an inquiry was held into an application by BNFL for outline planning permission to build a new plant to reprocess irradiated oxide nuclear fuel from both UK and foreign reactors. The inquiry was used to answer three questions:"1. Should oxide fuel from United Kingdom reactors be reprocessed in this country at all; whether at Windscale or elsewhere?The result of the inquiry was that the new plant, the Thermal Oxide Reprocessing Plant (Thorp) was given the go ahead in 1978, although it did not go into operation until 1994.
2. If yes, should such reprocessing be carried on at Windscale?
3. If yes, should the reprocessing plant be about double the estimated site required to handle United Kingdom oxide fuels and be used as to the spare capacity, for reprocessing foreign fuels?"
2005 Thorp plant leak
On 19 April 2005 83,000 litreLitre
pic|200px|right|thumb|One litre is equivalent to this cubeEach side is 10 cm1 litre water = 1 kilogram water The litre is a metric system unit of volume equal to 1 cubic decimetre , to 1,000 cubic centimetres , and to 1/1,000 cubic metre...
s of radioactive waste
Radioactive waste
Radioactive wastes are wastes that contain radioactive material. Radioactive wastes are usually by-products of nuclear power generation and other applications of nuclear fission or nuclear technology, such as research and medicine...
was discovered to have leaked in the Thorp reprocessing plant from a cracked pipe into a huge stainless steel
Stainless steel
In metallurgy, stainless steel, also known as inox steel or inox from French "inoxydable", is defined as a steel alloy with a minimum of 10.5 or 11% chromium content by mass....
-lined concrete
Concrete
Concrete is a composite construction material, composed of cement and other cementitious materials such as fly ash and slag cement, aggregate , water and chemical admixtures.The word concrete comes from the Latin word...
sump
Sump
A sump is a low space that collects any often-undesirable liquids such as water or chemicals. A sump can also be an infiltration basin used to manage surface runoff water and recharge underground aquifers....
chamber built to contain leaks.
A discrepancy between the amount of material entering and exiting the Thorp processing system had first been noted in August 2004. Operations staff, however, did not discover the leak until safeguards staff reported the discrepancies. Some 19 tonne
Tonne
The tonne, known as the metric ton in the US , often put pleonastically as "metric tonne" to avoid confusion with ton, is a metric system unit of mass equal to 1000 kilograms. The tonne is not an International System of Units unit, but is accepted for use with the SI...
s of uranium and 160 kilograms of plutonium dissolved in nitric acid
Nitric acid
Nitric acid , also known as aqua fortis and spirit of nitre, is a highly corrosive and toxic strong acid.Colorless when pure, older samples tend to acquire a yellow cast due to the accumulation of oxides of nitrogen. If the solution contains more than 86% nitric acid, it is referred to as fuming...
has been pumped from the sump vessel into a holding tank.
No radiation was released to the environment, and no one was injured by the incident, but because of the large escape of radioactivity to the secondary containment the incident was given an International Nuclear Event Scale
International Nuclear Event Scale
The International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale was introduced in 1990 by the International Atomic Energy Agency in order to enable prompt communication of safety significance information in case of nuclear accidents....
level 3 categorisation. Sellafield Limited was fined £500,000 for breaching health and safety law. In January 2007 Sellafield was given consent to restart THORP.
Highly Active Liquor Evaporation and Storage
Highly Active Liquor Evaporation and Storage (HALES) is a department at Sellafield. It conditions nuclear waste streams from the Magnox and Thorp reprocessing plants, prior to transfer to the Windscale Vitrification Plant.The vitrification plant
In 1991 the Windscale Vitrification Plant (WVP), which seals high-level radioactive waste in glass, was opened. In this plant, liquid wastes are mixed with glass and melted in a furnace, which when cooled forms a solid block of glass.The plant has three process lines and is based on the French AVM procedure. Principal item is an inductively heated melting furnace, in which the calcined waste is merged with glass frit (glass beads of 1 to 2 mm in diameter). The melt is placed into waste containers, which are welded shut, their outsides decontaminated and then brought into air-cooled storage facilities. This storage consists of 800 vertical storage tubes, each capable of storing ten containers. The total storage capacity is 8000 containers, and 5000 containers have been stored to 2010.
Vitrification should ensure safe storage of waste in the UK for the middle to long term.
The Sellafield MOX Plant
Construction of the Sellafield MOXMOX fuel
Mixed oxide fuel, commonly referred to as MOX fuel, is nuclear fuel that contains more than one oxide of fissile material. MOX fuel contains plutonium blended with natural uranium, reprocessed uranium, or depleted uranium. MOX fuel is an alternative to the low-enriched uranium fuel used in the...
Plant (SMP) was completed in 1997, though justification for the operation of the plant was not achieved until October 2001. Mixed oxide, or MOX fuel, is a blend of plutonium and natural uranium
Natural uranium
Natural uranium refers to refined uranium with the same isotopic ratio as found in nature. It contains 0.7 % uranium-235, 99.3 % uranium-238, and a trace of uranium-234 by weight. In terms of the amount of radioactivity, approximately 2.2 % comes from uranium-235, 48.6 % uranium-238, and 49.2 %...
or depleted uranium
Depleted uranium
Depleted uranium is uranium with a lower content of the fissile isotope U-235 than natural uranium . Uses of DU take advantage of its very high density of 19.1 g/cm3...
which behaves similarly (though not identically) to the enriched uranium
Enriched uranium
Enriched uranium is a kind of uranium in which the percent composition of uranium-235 has been increased through the process of isotope separation. Natural uranium is 99.284% 238U isotope, with 235U only constituting about 0.711% of its weight...
feed for which most nuclear reactors were designed. MOX fuel is an alternative to low enriched uranium (LEU) fuel used in the light water reactor
Light water reactor
The light water reactor is a type of thermal reactor that uses normal water as its coolant and neutron moderator. Thermal reactors are the most common type of nuclear reactor, and light water reactors are the most common type of thermal reactor...
s which predominate in nuclear power generation. MOX also provides a means of using excess weapons-grade plutonium (from military sources) to produce electricity.
Designed with a plant capacity of 120 tonnes/year, it achieved a total output of only 5 tonnes during its first five years of operation. In 2008 orders for the plant had to be fulfilled at COGEMA
COGEMA La Hague site
The AREVA NC La Hague site is a nuclear fuel reprocessing plant of AREVA in La Hague on the French Cotentin Peninsula that currently has nearly half of the world's light water reactor spent nuclear fuel reprocessing capacity. It has been in operation since 1976, and has a capacity of about 1700...
in France, and the plant was reported in the media as "failed" with a total build and operation cost of £1.2 billion.
On 12 May 2010 an agreement was reached with existing Japanese customers on future MOX supplies. In July 2010 Areva
Areva
AREVA is a French public multinational industrial conglomerate headquartered in the Tour Areva in Courbevoie, Paris. AREVA is mainly known for nuclear power; it also has interests in other energy projects. It was created on 3 September 2001, by the merger of Framatome , Cogema and...
was contracted to design and supply a new rod line to improve reliability and production rate.
On 3 August 2011 the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority
Nuclear Decommissioning Authority
The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority is a non-departmental public body of the United Kingdom formed by the Energy Act 2004. It came into existence in late 2004, and took on its main functions on 1 April 2005...
announced that the MOX Plant would close, due to the loss of Japanese orders following the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster
Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster
The is a series of equipment failures, nuclear meltdowns, and releases of radioactive materials at the Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant, following the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami on 11 March 2011. The plant comprises six separate boiling water reactors originally designed by General Electric ,...
.
Enhanced Actinide Removal Plant
In its early days, Sellafield discharged low-level radioactive wasteRadioactive waste
Radioactive wastes are wastes that contain radioactive material. Radioactive wastes are usually by-products of nuclear power generation and other applications of nuclear fission or nuclear technology, such as research and medicine...
into the sea, using a flocculation
Flocculation
Flocculation, in the field of chemistry, is a process wherein colloids come out of suspension in the form of floc or flakes by the addition of a clarifying agent. The action differs from precipitation in that, prior to flocculation, colloids are merely suspended in a liquid and not actually...
process to remove radioactivity from liquid effluent before discharge. Metals dissolved in acidic effluents produced a metal hydroxide flocculant precipitate
Precipitation (chemistry)
Precipitation is the formation of a solid in a solution or inside anothersolid during a chemical reaction or by diffusion in a solid. When the reaction occurs in a liquid, the solid formed is called the precipitate, or when compacted by a centrifuge, a pellet. The liquid remaining above the solid...
following the addition of ammonium hydroxide
Ammonium hydroxide
Ammonia solution, also known as ammonium hydroxide, ammonia water, ammonical liquor, ammonia liquor, aqua ammonia, aqueous ammonia, or simply ammonia, is a solution of ammonia in water. It can be denoted by the symbols NH3...
. The suspension was then transferred to settling tanks where the precipitate would settle out, and the remaining clarified liquid, or supernate, would be discharged to the sea. In 1994 the Enhanced Actinide Removal Plant (EARP) was opened. In EARP the effectiveness of the process is enhanced by the addition of reagents to remove the remaining soluble radioactive species. EARP has recently (2004) been enhanced to further reduce the quantities of Technetium-99
Technetium-99
Technetium-99 is an isotope of technetium which decays with a half-life of 211,000 years to stable ruthenium-99, emitting soft beta rays, but no gamma rays....
released to the environment.
Radioactive waste stores
Sellafield has a number of radioactive waste stores, mostly on an interim basis while a national waste repository plan is developed and implemented. The stores include:- Legacy Ponds and Silos - Storage of historic waste
- Sludge packaging plant - Treatment and interim storage of sludges from legacy ponds
- Sellafield product and residue store - Site store for plutonium and plutonium residues
- Engineered drum stores - Site stores for plutonium contaminated material
- Encapsulated product stores - Site stores for grouted wastes
- Vitrified product store - Vitrified high level waste
The UK's main Low Level Waste Repository
Low Level Waste Repository
Low Level Waste Repository is the UK's low-level radioactive waste repository located on the West Cumbrian coast approximately six kilometres south east of the Sellafield nuclear site at Drigg village. The site stores waste from Sellafield, MoD sites, nuclear power stations, hospitals,...
is 6 kilometres (3.7 mi) south east of Sellafield at Drigg
Drigg
Drigg is a village situated in the civil parish of Drigg and Carleton on the West Cumbria coast of the Irish Sea and on the boundary of the Lake District National Park in the county of Cumbria, England....
.
Fellside Power Station
Fellside Power Station is a 168MWe CHPCogeneration
Cogeneration is the use of a heat engine or a power station to simultaneously generate both electricity and useful heat....
gas-fired power station near the Sellafield site, which it supplies with steam and heat. It is run as Fellside Heat and Power Ltd, is wholly owned by Sellafield Ltd and is managed by PX Ltd and Doosan Babcock
Doosan Babcock
Doosan Babcock, is part of Doosan Power Systems Ltd a UK-based subsidiary of Doosan Heavy Industries & Construction. DPS is a power sector utility boiler OEM and after market services company, offering specialist services and technologies to clients in the nuclear power generation, fossil-fired...
. It was built in 1993, being originally equally owned by BNFL
BNFL
British Nuclear Fuels Limited was a nuclear energy and fuels company owned by the UK Government. It was a former manufacturer and transporter of nuclear fuel , ran reactors, generated and sold electricity, reprocessed and managed spent fuel , and decommissioned nuclear plants and other similar...
and Scottish Hydro Electric
Scottish Hydro Electric
Scottish Hydro plc was a Public Electricity Supplier formed on 1 August 1989 after a change of name from North of Scotland Electricity plc on that date...
(which became Scottish and Southern Energy in December 1998). The station uses three General Electric
General Electric
General Electric Company , or GE, is an American multinational conglomerate corporation incorporated in Schenectady, New York and headquartered in Fairfield, Connecticut, United States...
Frame 6001B gas turbine
Gas turbine
A gas turbine, also called a combustion turbine, is a type of internal combustion engine. It has an upstream rotating compressor coupled to a downstream turbine, and a combustion chamber in-between....
s, with power entering the National Grid via a 132kV transformer
Transformer
A transformer is a device that transfers electrical energy from one circuit to another through inductively coupled conductors—the transformer's coils. A varying current in the first or primary winding creates a varying magnetic flux in the transformer's core and thus a varying magnetic field...
. BNFL bought SSE's 50% share in January 2002.
Sellafield and the local community
Sellafield directly employs around 10,000 people and is one of the two largest, non-governmental, employers in West Cumbria (along with BAE Systems at Barrow-in-FurnessBarrow-in-Furness
Barrow-in-Furness is an industrial town and seaport which forms about half the territory of the wider Borough of Barrow-in-Furness in the county of Cumbria, England. It lies north of Liverpool, northwest of Manchester and southwest from the county town of Carlisle...
), with approximately 90% of the employees coming from West Cumbria. Because of the increase in local unemployment following any run down of Sellafield operations, the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (and HMG) is concerned that this needs to be managed.
Sellafield Centre - Business and Information Centre
At its peak, the Visitors' Centre attracted an average of 1,000 people per day. In recent years, its popularity has deteriorated, prompting the change from tourist attraction to conference facility.
Environment and health issues
The site has been the subject of much controversy because of discharges of radioactive material, mainly accidental but some alleged to have been deliberate. Since the early 1970s and the rise of the environmental movementEnvironmental movement
The environmental movement, a term that includes the conservation and green politics, is a diverse scientific, social, and political movement for addressing environmental issues....
in the US and Europe, there has also been general scepticism of the nuclear industry. In part this has not been helped by the industry's early connections to the nuclear weapons programme.
Radiological releases
Between 1950 and 2000 there have been 21 serious incidents or accidents involving some off-site radiological releases that merited a rating on the International Nuclear Event ScaleInternational Nuclear Event Scale
The International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale was introduced in 1990 by the International Atomic Energy Agency in order to enable prompt communication of safety significance information in case of nuclear accidents....
, one at level 5, five at level 4 and fifteen at level 3. Additionally during the 1950s and 1960s there were protracted periods of known, deliberate, discharges to the atmosphere of plutonium and irradiated uranium oxide
Uranium oxide
Uranium oxide is an oxide of the element uranium.The metal uranium forms several oxides:* Uranium dioxide or uranium oxide * Uranium trioxide or uranium oxide...
particulates. These frequent incidents, together with the large 2005 Thorp plant leak which was not detected for nine months, have led some to doubt the effectiveness of the managerial processes and safety culture on the site over the years.
In the effort to build an independent British nuclear weapon
Nuclear weapons and the United Kingdom
The United Kingdom was the third country to test an independently developed nuclear weapon, in October 1952. It is one of the five "Nuclear Weapons States" under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which the UK ratified in 1968...
in the 1940s and 1950s, the Sellafield plant was constructed; diluted radioactive waste discharged by pipeline into the Irish Sea
Irish Sea
The Irish Sea separates the islands of Ireland and Great Britain. It is connected to the Celtic Sea in the south by St George's Channel, and to the Atlantic Ocean in the north by the North Channel. Anglesey is the largest island within the Irish Sea, followed by the Isle of Man...
. Some claim that the Irish Sea remains one of the most heavily contaminated seas in the world because of these discharges. The Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment of the North-East Atlantic
Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment of the North-East Atlantic
The or OSPAR Convention is the current legislative instrument regulating international cooperation on environmental protection in the North-East Atlantic. It combines and up-dates the 1972 Oslo Convention on dumping waste at sea and the 1974 Paris Convention on land-based sources of marine pollution...
(OSPAR Convention) reports an estimated 200 kilograms (441 lb
Pound (mass)
The pound or pound-mass is a unit of mass used in the Imperial, United States customary and other systems of measurement...
) of plutonium has been deposited in the marine sediments of the Irish Sea. Cattle and fish in the area are contaminated with plutonium-239 and caesium-137
Caesium-137
Caesium-137 is a radioactive isotope of caesium which is formed as a fission product by nuclear fission.It has a half-life of about 30.17 years, and decays by beta emission to a metastable nuclear isomer of barium-137: barium-137m . Caesium-137 is a radioactive isotope of caesium which is formed...
from these sediments and from other sources such as the radioactive rain that fell on the area after the Chernobyl disaster
Chernobyl disaster
The Chernobyl disaster was a nuclear accident that occurred on 26 April 1986 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine , which was under the direct jurisdiction of the central authorities in Moscow...
. Most of the area's long-lived radioactive technetium
Technetium
Technetium is the chemical element with atomic number 43 and symbol Tc. It is the lowest atomic number element without any stable isotopes; every form of it is radioactive. Nearly all technetium is produced synthetically and only minute amounts are found in nature...
comes from the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel at the Sellafield facility.
Technetium-99 is a radioactive element which is produced by nuclear fuel reprocessing, and also as a by-product of medical facilities (for example Ireland
Republic of Ireland
Ireland , described as the Republic of Ireland , is a sovereign state in Europe occupying approximately five-sixths of the island of the same name. Its capital is Dublin. Ireland, which had a population of 4.58 million in 2011, is a constitutional republic governed as a parliamentary democracy,...
is responsible for the discharge of approximately 6.78 gigabecquerels
Becquerel
The becquerel is the SI-derived unit of radioactivity. One Bq is defined as the activity of a quantity of radioactive material in which one nucleus decays per second. The Bq unit is therefore equivalent to an inverse second, s−1...
of technetium-99 each year despite not having a nuclear industry).
Because it is almost uniquely produced by nuclear fuel reprocessing, technetium-99 is an important element as part of the OSPAR Convention since it provides a good tracer for discharges into the sea.
In itself, the technetium discharges do not represent a significant radiological hazard, and recent studies have noted "...that in the most recently reported dose estimates for the most exposed Sellafield group of seafood consumers (FSA
Food Standards Agency
The Food Standards Agency is a non-ministerial government department of the Government of the United Kingdom. It is responsible for protecting public health in relation to food throughout the United Kingdom and is led by a board appointed to act in the public interest...
/SEPA
Scottish Environment Protection Agency
The Scottish Environment Protection Agency is Scotland’s environmental regulator. Its main role is to protect and improve Scotland's environment...
2000), the contributions from Technetium-99 and actinide
Actinide
The actinide or actinoid series encompasses the 15 metallic chemical elements with atomic numbers from 89 to 103, actinium through lawrencium.The actinide series derives its name from the group 3 element actinium...
nuclides from Sellafield (<100 µSv
Sievert
The sievert is the International System of Units SI derived unit of dose equivalent radiation. It attempts to quantitatively evaluate the biological effects of ionizing radiation as opposed to just the absorbed dose of radiation energy, which is measured in gray...
) was less than that from 210Po
Polonium
Polonium is a chemical element with the symbol Po and atomic number 84, discovered in 1898 by Marie Skłodowska-Curie and Pierre Curie. A rare and highly radioactive element, polonium is chemically similar to bismuth and tellurium, and it occurs in uranium ores. Polonium has been studied for...
attributable to discharges from the Whitehaven
Whitehaven
Whitehaven is a small town and port on the coast of Cumbria, England, which lies equidistant between the county's two largest settlements, Carlisle and Barrow-in-Furness, and is served by the Cumbrian Coast Line and the A595 road...
phosphate
Phosphate
A phosphate, an inorganic chemical, is a salt of phosphoric acid. In organic chemistry, a phosphate, or organophosphate, is an ester of phosphoric acid. Organic phosphates are important in biochemistry and biogeochemistry or ecology. Inorganic phosphates are mined to obtain phosphorus for use in...
processing plant and probably less than the dose from naturally occurring background levels of 210Po." Because of the need to comply with the OSPAR Convention, British Nuclear Group
British Nuclear Group
Sellafield Ltd is a nuclear decommissioning Site Licence Company controlled by Nuclear Management Partners Ltd, its designated Parent Body Organisation...
(the licensing company for Sellafield) have recently commissioned a new process in which technetium-99 is removed from the waste stream and vitrified in glass blocks.
Discharges into the sea of radioactive effluents - mainly caesium-137
Caesium-137
Caesium-137 is a radioactive isotope of caesium which is formed as a fission product by nuclear fission.It has a half-life of about 30.17 years, and decays by beta emission to a metastable nuclear isomer of barium-137: barium-137m . Caesium-137 is a radioactive isotope of caesium which is formed...
- from the Magnox reprocessing plant's storage pond amounted to TBq
Becquerel
The becquerel is the SI-derived unit of radioactivity. One Bq is defined as the activity of a quantity of radioactive material in which one nucleus decays per second. The Bq unit is therefore equivalent to an inverse second, s−1...
during the peak year, 1975.
There has been concern that the Sellafield area will become a major dumping ground for unwanted nuclear material, since there are currently no long-term facilities for storing High-Level Waste
Radioactive waste
Radioactive wastes are wastes that contain radioactive material. Radioactive wastes are usually by-products of nuclear power generation and other applications of nuclear fission or nuclear technology, such as research and medicine...
(HLW), although the UK has current contracts to reprocess spent fuel from all over the world. However, contracts signed since 1976 between BNFL
BNFL
British Nuclear Fuels Limited was a nuclear energy and fuels company owned by the UK Government. It was a former manufacturer and transporter of nuclear fuel , ran reactors, generated and sold electricity, reprocessed and managed spent fuel , and decommissioned nuclear plants and other similar...
and overseas customers require that all HLW be returned to the country of origin. The UK retains low- and intermediate-level waste resulting from its reprocessing activity, and instead ships out a radiologically equivalent amount of its own HLW. This substitution policy is intended to be environmentally neutral and to speed return of overseas material by reducing the number of shipments required, since HLW is far less bulky.
1983 was the year of the "Beach Discharge Incident" in which high radioactive discharges containing ruthenium
Ruthenium
Ruthenium is a chemical element with symbol Ru and atomic number 44. It is a rare transition metal belonging to the platinum group of the periodic table. Like the other metals of the platinum group, ruthenium is inert to most chemicals. The Russian scientist Karl Ernst Claus discovered the element...
and rhodium 106
Isotopes of rhodium
Naturally occurring rhodium is composed of only one stable isotope, 103Rh. The most stable radioisotopes are 101Rh with a half-life of 3.3 years, 102Rh with a half-life of 207 days, 102mRh with a half-life of 2.9 years, and 99Rh with a half-life of 16.1 days. Thirty other radioisotopes have been...
, both beta
Beta particle
Beta particles are high-energy, high-speed electrons or positrons emitted by certain types of radioactive nuclei such as potassium-40. The beta particles emitted are a form of ionizing radiation also known as beta rays. The production of beta particles is termed beta decay...
-emitting isotopes, resulted in the closure of beaches along a 10-mile stretch of coast between St. Bees and Eskmeals, along with warnings against swimming in the sea.
BNFL received a fine of £10,000 for this discharge. 1983 was also the year in which Yorkshire Television
Yorkshire Television
Yorkshire Television, now officially known as ITV Yorkshire and sometimes unofficially abbreviated to YTV, is a British television broadcaster and the contractor for the Yorkshire franchise area on the ITV network...
produced a documentary "Windscale: The Nuclear Laundry", which claimed that the low levels of radioactivity that are associated with waste streams from nuclear plants such as Sellafield did pose a non-negligible risk.
Dirty Thirty
The open pit in building B30, named dirty thirty, is used to store radioactive leftovers from the Magnox period and renowned for its bad state. The pool is 20m wide, 150m long and 6m deep. Birds land on its surface and take small amounts of radioactive substances with them. The pool was used from 1960 until 1986. A confinement wall is scheduled to be built in the future to help it withstand earthquakes. The pool is to be emptied and dismantled in years to come.It is impossible to determine exactly how much radioactive waste is stored in B30; algae is forming in the pool, making visual examinations difficult. British authorities have not been able to provide the Euratom inspectors with precise data. The European Commission has thus sued Great Britain in the European Court of Justice. There are expected to be about 1.3 tons of plutonium, 400 kg of which are in mud sediments. It is thought the pool also contains waste from the Tokai Mura plant (Japan).
Radiation around the pool can get so high that a person is not allowed to stay more than 2 minutes, seriously affecting decommissioning. The pool is not watertight, time and weather have created cracks in the concrete, letting contaminated water leak.
Organ removal inquiry
In 2007 an inquiry was launched into the removal of tissue from a total of 65 deceased nuclear workers, some of whom worked at Sellafield. It has been alleged that the tissue was removed without seeking permission from the relatives of the late workers. Michael Redfern QC has been appointed to lead the investigation. At the same time The ObserverThe Observer
The Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-Origins:The first issue,...
revealed that official documents showed that during the 1960s volunteer workers at Sellafield had participated in secret Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
experiments to assess the biological effect of exposure to radioactive substances, such as from ingesting caesium-134.
The inquiry final report was published in November 2010, reporting that "...body parts had been removed between 1961 and 1992. The deaths of 76 workers – 64 from Sellafield and 12 from other UK nuclear plants – were examined, although the scope of the inquiry was later significantly widened." The person behind this scheme was Dr Geoffrey Schofield, who became BNFL’s Company Chief Medical Officer, and who died in 1985. Sellafield staff did not breach any legal obligation, did not consider their actions untoward, and published the scientific information obtained in peer-reviewed scientific journals. It was the hospital pathologists, who were profoundly ignorant of the law, who breached the Human Tissue Act 1961 by giving Sellafield human organs, without any consents, under an informal arrangement.
Cancer risks
According to Stephanie CookeStephanie Cooke
Stephanie S. Cooke is a journalist who began her reporting career in 1977 at the Associated Press. In 1980 she moved to McGraw-Hill in New York as a reporter for Nucleonics Week, NuclearFuel and Inside N.R.C. In 1984 she transferred to London and two years later covered the aftermath of the...
, the British Government has been "at pains over the years to play down attempts to correlate cancer
Cancer
Cancer , known medically as a malignant neoplasm, is a large group of different diseases, all involving unregulated cell growth. In cancer, cells divide and grow uncontrollably, forming malignant tumors, and invade nearby parts of the body. The cancer may also spread to more distant parts of the...
s with Sellafield radioactivity, particularly when it involves individuals living near the plant but not working at it".
In 1983, the Medical Officer of West Cumbria announced that cancer fatality rates were actually lower around the nuclear plant than elsewhere in Great Britain. In the early 1990s, concern was raised in the UK about apparent clusters of leukaemia near nuclear facilities.
A 1997 Ministry of Health report stated that children living close to Sellafield had twice as much plutonium in their teeth as children living more than 100 miles (160.9 km) away. Health Minister Melanie Johnson
Melanie Johnson
Melanie Jane Johnson is a Labour politician in the United Kingdom.-Early life:Johnson attended the Independent Clifton High School in Clifton, Bristol. Leaving Bristol for London, Johnson studied at University College London, gaining a BA in Philosophy and Ancient Greek...
said the quantities were minute and "presented no risk to public health". The University of Dundee
University of Dundee
The University of Dundee is a university based in the city and Royal burgh of Dundee on eastern coast of the central Lowlands of Scotland and with a small number of institutions elsewhere....
's Professor Eric Wright, a leading expert on blood disorders, challenged this claim, saying that even microscopic amounts of the man-made element might cause cancer.
Detailed studies carried out by the Committee on Medical Aspects of Radiation in the Environment (COMARE) in 2003 reported no evidence of raised childhood cancer in general around nuclear power plants, but did report an excess of leukaemia
Leukemia
Leukemia or leukaemia is a type of cancer of the blood or bone marrow characterized by an abnormal increase of immature white blood cells called "blasts". Leukemia is a broad term covering a spectrum of diseases...
(cancer of the blood or bone) and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL) (blood cancer) near nuclear plants including Sellafield, AWE
Atomic Weapons Establishment
The Atomic Weapons Establishment is responsible for the design, manufacture and support of warheads for the United Kingdom's nuclear deterrent. AWE plc is responsible for the day-to-day operations of AWE...
Burghfield
Burghfield
Burghfield is a village and civil parish in West Berkshire, England, close to the boundary with Reading.-Location:Burghfield is about southwest of Reading...
and UKAEA Dounreay
Dounreay
Dounreay is the site of several nuclear research establishments located on the north coast of Caithness, in the Highland area of Scotland...
.
COMARE's opinion is that "the excesses around Sellafield and Dounreay are unlikely to be due to chance, although there is not at present a convincing explanation for them". In earlier reports COMARE had suggested that "..no single factor could account for the excess of leukaemia and NHL but that a mechanism involving infection may be a significant factor affecting the risk of leukaemia and NHL in young people in Seascale."
Irish objections
Sellafield has been a matter of some consternation in IrelandRepublic of Ireland
Ireland , described as the Republic of Ireland , is a sovereign state in Europe occupying approximately five-sixths of the island of the same name. Its capital is Dublin. Ireland, which had a population of 4.58 million in 2011, is a constitutional republic governed as a parliamentary democracy,...
, with the Irish Government
Irish Government
The Government of Ireland is the cabinet that exercises executive authority in Ireland.-Members of the Government:Membership of the Government is regulated fundamentally by the Constitution of Ireland. The Government is headed by a prime minister called the Taoiseach...
and some members of the population concerned at the risk that such a facility may pose to the country. The Irish government has made formal complaints about the facility, and recently came to a friendly agreement with the British Government about the matter, as part of which the Radiological Protection Institute of Ireland
Radiological Protection Institute of Ireland
The Radiological Protection Institute of Ireland is an independent public body in the Republic of Ireland under the ageis of the Department of Environment, Heritage and Local Government.The RPII was established in 1992 under the , which conferred on the RPII a broad remit in relation to...
and An Garda Síochána (Irish Police Force) are now allowed access to the site. However, Irish government policy remains that of seeking the closure of the facility.
Norwegian objections
Similar objections to those held by the Irish government have been voiced by the NorwegianNorway
Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...
government since 1997. Monitoring undertaken by the Norwegian Radiation Protection Authority has shown that the prevailing sea currents transport radioactive materials leaked into the sea at Sellafield along the entire coast of Norway and water samples have shown up to ten-fold increases in such materials as Technetium-99. Fears for the reputation of Norwegian fish as a safe food product have been a concern of the country's fishing industry, though the radiation levels have not been conclusively proved as dangerous for the fish. The Norwegian government is also seeking closure of the facility.
MOX fuel quality data falsification
The MOX Demonstration Facility was a small-scale plant to produce commercial quality MOX fuel for light water reactors. The plant was commissioned between 1992 and 1994, and until 1999 produced fuel for use in SwitzerlandSwitzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
, Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
and Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
.
In 1999 it was discovered that the plant's staff had been falsifying some quality assurance data since 1996. A Nuclear Installations Inspectorate (NII) investigation concluded four of the five work-shifts were involved in the falsification, though only one worker admitted to falsifying data, and that "the level of control and supervision ... had been virtually non existent.". The NII stated that the safety performance of the fuel was not affected as there was also a primary automated check on the fuel. Nevertheless "in a plant with the proper safety culture, the events described in this report could not have happened" and there were systematic failures in management.
BNFL had to pay compensation to the Japanese customer, Kansai Electric, and take back a flawed shipment of MOX fuel from Japan. BNFL's Chief Executive John Taylor resigned, after initially resisting resignation when the NII's damning report was published.
Plutonium records discrepancy
On 17 February 2005, the UK Atomic Energy Authority reported that 29.6 kg (65.3 lb) of plutonium was unaccounted for in auditing records at the Sellafield nuclear fuel reprocessing plant. The operating company, the British Nuclear GroupBritish Nuclear Group
Sellafield Ltd is a nuclear decommissioning Site Licence Company controlled by Nuclear Management Partners Ltd, its designated Parent Body Organisation...
, described this as a discrepancy in paper records and not as indicating any physical loss of material. They pointed out that the error amounted to about 0.5%, whereas International Atomic Energy Agency
International Atomic Energy Agency
The International Atomic Energy Agency is an international organization that seeks to promote the peaceful use of nuclear energy, and to inhibit its use for any military purpose, including nuclear weapons. The IAEA was established as an autonomous organization on 29 July 1957...
regulations permit a discrepancy up to 1% as the amount of plutonium recovered from the reprocessing process never precisely matches the pre-process estimates. The inventories in question were accepted as satisfactory by Euratom, the relevant regulatory agency.
Finances
In 2003 it was announced that the Thorp reprocessing plant would be closed in 2010. Originally predicted to make profits for BNFLBNFL
British Nuclear Fuels Limited was a nuclear energy and fuels company owned by the UK Government. It was a former manufacturer and transporter of nuclear fuel , ran reactors, generated and sold electricity, reprocessed and managed spent fuel , and decommissioned nuclear plants and other similar...
of £500m, by 2003 it had made losses of over £1bn. Subsequently Thorp was closed for almost two years from 2005, after a leak had been undetected for 9 months. Production eventually restarted at the plant in early 2008; but almost immediately had to be put on hold again, for an underwater lift that takes the fuel for reprocessing to be repaired.
In November 2008 Sellafield was taken over by a new US-led consortium (US company URS Corp.
URS Corp.
URS Corporation is an engineering design firm and a U.S. federal government contractor. Headquartered in San Francisco, California, URS is a full-service, global organization with offices located in the Americas, Europe and Asia-Pacific.-History:...
, French firm Areva
Areva
AREVA is a French public multinational industrial conglomerate headquartered in the Tour Areva in Courbevoie, Paris. AREVA is mainly known for nuclear power; it also has interests in other energy projects. It was created on 3 September 2001, by the merger of Framatome , Cogema and...
and the UK company Amec
AMEC
AMEC plc is a global consultancy, engineering and project management company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is focused on the oil and gas, minerals and metals, renewable energy, environment and infrastructure sectors and has offices in 40 countries worldwide...
) for decommissioning, as part of a 5-year £6.5bn contract. In October 2008 it was revealed that the British government had agreed to issue Sellafield an unlimited indemnity against future accidents; according to The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
, "the indemnity even covers accidents and leaks that are the consortium's fault." The indemnity had been rushed through prior to the summer parliamentary recess without notifying parliament.
Decommissioning
Sellafield's biggest decommissioning challenges relate to the leftovers of the early nuclear research and nuclear weapons programmes. Sellafield houses "the most hazardous industrial building in western Europe" (building B30) and the second-most (building B38), which hold a variety of leftovers from the first Magnox plants in ageing ponds. Some of the problems with B38 date back to the 1972 miners' strike: the reactors were pushed so hard that waste processing could not keep up, and "cladding and fuel were simply thrown into B38's cooling ponds and left to disintegrate." Some of the problems date back to the original nuclear weapons programme at Sellafield, when Piles 1 and 2 were constructed at breakneck speed, and safe disposal was not a priority. Building B41 still houses the aluminium cladding for the uranium fuel rods of Piles 1 and 2, and is modelled on a grain silo, with waste tipped in at the top and argonArgon
Argon is a chemical element represented by the symbol Ar. Argon has atomic number 18 and is the third element in group 18 of the periodic table . Argon is the third most common gas in the Earth's atmosphere, at 0.93%, making it more common than carbon dioxide...
gas added to prevent fires.
In 2009 Sellafield decommissioning accounts for 40% of the budget of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority - over £1.1bn. Sellafield decommissioning and waste disposal is expected to cost the taxpayer £1.5bn per year for many years.
Music
German synth group KraftwerkKraftwerk
Kraftwerk is an influential electronic music band from Düsseldorf, Germany. The group was formed by Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider in 1970, and was fronted by them until Schneider's departure in 2008...
's 1991 remix of their 1975 song Radioactivity
Radioactivity (song)
Fatboy Slim covered "Radioactivity" on his compilation album Late Night Tales: Fatboy Slim. The song was released as a limited edition 7" single.- Track listing :# "Radioactivity" - Fatboy Slim# "Everything Is Everything" - Bootsy Collins...
mentions Sellafield together with Chernobyl
Chernobyl disaster
The Chernobyl disaster was a nuclear accident that occurred on 26 April 1986 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine , which was under the direct jurisdiction of the central authorities in Moscow...
, Hiroshima
Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
During the final stages of World War II in 1945, the United States conducted two atomic bombings against the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan, the first on August 6, 1945, and the second on August 9, 1945. These two events are the only use of nuclear weapons in war to date.For six months...
and Harrisburg
Three Mile Island accident
The Three Mile Island accident was a core meltdown in Unit 2 of the Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania near Harrisburg, United States in 1979....
, other known places of nuclear radiation disasters.
In 1992, rock bands U2
U2
U2 are an Irish rock band from Dublin. Formed in 1976, the group consists of Bono , The Edge , Adam Clayton , and Larry Mullen, Jr. . U2's early sound was rooted in post-punk but eventually grew to incorporate influences from many genres of popular music...
, Public Enemy, Big Audio Dynamite II, and Kraftwerk
Kraftwerk
Kraftwerk is an influential electronic music band from Düsseldorf, Germany. The group was formed by Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider in 1970, and was fronted by them until Schneider's departure in 2008...
held a "Stop Sellafield" concert for Greenpeace
Greenpeace
Greenpeace is a non-governmental environmental organization with offices in over forty countries and with an international coordinating body in Amsterdam, The Netherlands...
to protest against the nuclear factory. Stop Sellafield: The Concert was later released that year on VHS in the UK, and all proceeds went directly to Greenpeace.
U2's performance from the "Stop Sellafield" concert was held during their Zoo TV Tour
Zoo TV Tour
The Zoo TV Tour was a worldwide concert tour by rock band U2. Staged in support of their 1991 album Achtung Baby, the tour visited arenas and stadiums from 1992 through 1993...
on 19 June 1992 at the G-Mex Centre in Manchester, England. Two tracks from the concert, "The Fly
The Fly (song)
"The Fly" is a song by rock band U2. It is the seventh track from their 1991 album Achtung Baby and it was released as the album's first single on 12 October 1991. "The Fly" introduced a more abrasive sounding U2, as the song featured hip-hop and industrial beats, distorted vocals, and an elaborate...
" and "Even Better Than the Real Thing
Even Better Than the Real Thing
"Even Better Than the Real Thing" is the second song on U2's 1991 album Achtung Baby. It was released as the album's fourth single on 7 June 1992.-Writing and recording:...
", were later released on the band's "City of Blinding Lights
City of Blinding Lights
"City of Blinding Lights" is a song by the rock band U2. It is the fifth track on their 2004 album How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb and was released as the album's fourth single on 6 June 2005. The song was a top ten hit in Ireland, the United Kingdom, and several other countries...
" CD single and on the Zoo TV: Live from Sydney
Zoo TV: Live From Sydney
Zoo TV: Live from Sydney is a concert video release by rock band U2 from the "Zoomerang" leg of their Zoo TV Tour. Recorded on Saturday, November 27, 1993 at Sydney Football Stadium on the band's featured stop in Sydney, Australia, it was released in May 1994 on VHS and Laserdisc, and re-released...
DVD.
Since 1992, German band Kraftwerk has introduced their song "Radioactivity" in their live shows with a video clip criticizing the Sellafield-2 reactor for radiation released into the atmosphere during typical operation and the dangers of reprocessing plutonium in regard to nuclear proliferation
Nuclear proliferation
Nuclear proliferation is a term now used to describe the spread of nuclear weapons, fissile material, and weapons-applicable nuclear technology and information, to nations which are not recognized as "Nuclear Weapon States" by the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons, also known as the...
:
Sellafield-2 will produce 7.5 tons of plutonium every year. 1.5 kilogram of plutonium make a nuclear bomb.
Sellafield-2 will release the same amount of radioactivity into the environment as Chernobyl every 4.5 years. One of these radioactive substances, Krypton-85Krypton-85Krypton 85 is a radioisotope of krypton.It decays into rubidium-85, with a half-life of 10.756 years and a maximum decay energy of 0.687 MeV.Its most common decay is by beta particle emission with maximum energy of 687...
, will cause death and skin cancer.
This introduction can be heard on their 2005 live album
Live album
A live album is a recording consisting of material recorded during stage performances using remote recording techniques, commonly contrasted with a studio album...
and DVD Minimum-Maximum
Minimum-Maximum
Minimum-Maximum is the first official live album release by Kraftwerk, released in June 2005, almost 35 years after the group gave their first live performance...
. Sellafield-2 was the name given by environmental groups including Greenpeace to a proposed second plant to reprocess oxide fuel (it is not obvious how seriously proposed, a public enquiry was never opened).
The Irish folk musician, Derek Warfield
Derek Warfield
Derek Warfield is an Irish singer, songwriter, historian, and a founding member of the musical group Wolfe Tones.-Personal life:Warfield was born the eldest of four in Inchicore, Dublin in 1943 and he was educated at Synge Street CBS. He was apprenticed as a tailor until becoming a folk musician....
, wrote a song critical of Sellafield, "Sellafield Tiocfaidh Ar La", which was included in his 2001 album, Slan Abahile.
Other
FalloutFallout (RTÉ drama)
Fallout is a RTÉ two-part fictional drama, made in the style of a documentary. It deals with the nuclear fallout following a hypothetical disaster in the Sellafield Nuclear Reprocessing Plant in Cumbria on the British coast of the Irish Sea...
, a programme shown in 2006 on the Irish national TV station RTÉ, was a documentary-style drama showing the possible effects of a serious accident at Sellafield. The programme highlighted the fact that an accident could cause long scale contamination of Ireland's most densely populated areas, including its capital city, Dublin.
Sellafield was the subject of Marilynne Robinson's
Marilynne Robinson
-Biography:Robinson was born and grew up in Sandpoint, Idaho, and did her undergraduate work at Pembroke College, the former women's college at Brown University, receiving her B.A., magna cum laude in 1966, where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. She received her Ph.D...
1989 book, Mother Country, a critique of British nuclear policy.
See also
- Nuclear powerNuclear powerNuclear power is the use of sustained nuclear fission to generate heat and electricity. Nuclear power plants provide about 6% of the world's energy and 13–14% of the world's electricity, with the U.S., France, and Japan together accounting for about 50% of nuclear generated electricity...
- Nuclear reprocessingNuclear reprocessingNuclear reprocessing technology was developed to chemically separate and recover fissionable plutonium from irradiated nuclear fuel. Reprocessing serves multiple purposes, whose relative importance has changed over time. Originally reprocessing was used solely to extract plutonium for producing...
- Nuclear fuel cycleNuclear fuel cycleThe nuclear fuel cycle, also called nuclear fuel chain, is the progression of nuclear fuel through a series of differing stages. It consists of steps in the front end, which are the preparation of the fuel, steps in the service period in which the fuel is used during reactor operation, and steps in...
- COGEMA La Hague siteCOGEMA La Hague siteThe AREVA NC La Hague site is a nuclear fuel reprocessing plant of AREVA in La Hague on the French Cotentin Peninsula that currently has nearly half of the world's light water reactor spent nuclear fuel reprocessing capacity. It has been in operation since 1976, and has a capacity of about 1700...
(a similar site in FranceFranceThe French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
) - List of cancer clusters
- List of nuclear accidents
- List of nuclear reactors
- Nuclear power in the United KingdomNuclear power in the United KingdomNuclear power currently generates around a sixth of the United Kingdom's electricity. As of 2011, the United Kingdom operates 19 nuclear reactors at nine locations...
- Energy policy of the United KingdomEnergy policy of the United KingdomThe current energy policy of the United Kingdom is set out in the Energy White Paper of May 2007 and Low Carbon Transition Plan of July 2009, building on previous work including the 2003 Energy White Paper and the Energy Review Report in 2006...
- Energy use and conservation in the United KingdomEnergy use and conservation in the United KingdomEnergy use in the United Kingdom stood at 3,894.6 kilogrammes of oil equivalent per capita in 2005 compared to a world average of 1,778.0. In 2008, total energy consumed was 9.85 exajoules - around 2% of the estimated 474 EJ worldwide total...
- Cumbrians Opposed to a Radioactive EnvironmentCumbrians Opposed to a Radioactive EnvironmentCumbrians Opposed to a Radioactive Environment is a non-political, non-profit organisation, located in Barrow-in-Furness, which since 1980 has campaigned against all aspects of the operation of Sellafield, formally Windscale and the site of the 1957 reactor fire...
- Tom TuohyTom TuohyThomas Tuohy CBE , was deputy to the general manager at the Windscale nuclear facility when a major fire erupted on 10 October 1957...
- Hanford SiteHanford SiteThe Hanford Site is a mostly decommissioned nuclear production complex on the Columbia River in the U.S. state of Washington, operated by the United States federal government. The site has been known by many names, including Hanford Works, Hanford Engineer Works or HEW, Hanford Nuclear Reservation...
Further reading
- Sellafield, Erik Martiniussen, Bellona FoundationBellona FoundationThe Bellona Foundation is a multi-disciplinary international environmental NGO based in Oslo, Norway. Founded in 1986 by Frederic Hauge and Rune Haaland as a direct action protest group, it has since blossomed into a recognized technology and solution-oriented environmental champion with offices on...
, December 2003, ISBN 82-92318-08-9 - Technetium-99 Behaviour in the Terrestrial Environment - Field Observations and Radiotracer Experiments, Keiko Tagami, Journal of Nuclear and Radiochemical Sciences, Vol. 4, No.1, pp. A1-A8, 2003
- The excess of childhood leukaemia near Sellafield: a commentary on the fourth COMARE report, L J Kinlen et al. 1997 J. Radiol. Prot. 17 63-71
Official Information
- Nuclear Decommissioning Authority
- Sellafield Ltd
- British Nuclear Fuels Ltd
- National Nuclear Laboratory
1957 Fire
- An article on the Windscale fire, by the Lake District Tourist Board
- Nuclear Tourist
- BBC retrospective on the accident report