Sellafield
In this green and pleasant Cumbrian landscape where Wasdale and Eskdale meet
the sea there has grown up a vast nuclear complex-Sellafield.
It employs well over 7,000 people and was deliberately sited beyond the western
Lakeland mountains because there was thought to be a slight chance it might
be dangerous.
'Sellafield holds the largest stock of untreated nuclear waste on earth. 140
tonnes of plutonium. employs 10,000 people and expensive clean up will cost
£90 billion and take more than 100 years.' FT 6/2/2022
The vast site embraces: Britain's first two plutonium producing reactors(now
being dismantled), the world's first four commercial nuclear reactors,(all
reactors now disused) a defunct AGR reactor, two nuclear fuel reprocessing
plants (Thorp and B205 Magnox) , Britain's main plutonium
stockpile, a MOX plant that has rarely worked to its specifications and acres
of high and intermediate level nuclear waste stores. There is a high probability
that industry plans will also excavate a deep underground dump for high level
nuclear waste somewhere in the Western Lakes, close to Sellafield.
For a number of years Sellafield had a Visitor Centre that gave a pleasant
upbeat view of how Sellafield sees the world.
The "Hot" Environment & Plans
in 2009 to make it Hotter!
Plutonium 1957
Top Secret
Reprocessing
Moorside
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2026: Sellafield have applied to the Environment Agency for
a licence to abstract/discharge contaminated water in the vicinity
of the leaking Magnox Silos. The reason the Magnox Silos are leaking
is because they are partially underground. It is of huge concern that
Sellafield are looking to do the same again by mining a 7 metre deep
tunnel which would be part of the planned "Box Encapsulation
Plant Product Store 2“ (nuclear waste is proposed to be moved
from the magnox silos to the proposed BEPPS2, the plan is to then
top up the Magnox Silos with fresh water to try and dilute the leaking
contamination) The reason for the 7 metre deep tunnel which would
release the contaminated water has not been revealed by Sellafield
as far as we know, neither to the EA or to the Judge. The process
of digging the tunnel and lining with concrete would say Sellafield
take a very short time - which begs the question why is their application
to the EA for abstraction/discharge of contaminated water for several
years? Sellafield plan to abstract and dispose of 40 cubic metres
an hour of contaminated water into the Rivers Calder and Ehen directly
(via the Calder Interceptor Sewer) and indirectly (via groundwater
and run off) for the next seven years.
2017: The North Korean connection.. The British Magnox nuclear plant
design which was primarily built as a military plutonium production
factory provided the blueprint for the North Korean military plutonium
production program too! Here is what a Conservative minister, Douglas
Hogg told former Labor MP, Llew Smith, in a written parliamentary
reply on 25 May 1994:"We do not know whether North Korea has
drawn on plans of British reactors in the production of its own reactors.
North Korea possesses a graphite moderated reactor which, while much
smaller, has generic similarities to the reactors operated by British
Nuclear Fuels plc. However, design information of these British reactors
is not classified and has appeared in technical journals."
Lakeland earmarked as most likely
site
for UK's nuclear waste caverns
Ecologist
Magazine report on BBC4 documentary on Sellafield
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To find out
more about Sellafield, the following web sites may be helpful.
Sellafield
Sites website
The
costs of decommisioning nuclear reactors (10 billion per reactor)
Cumbrian
campaigning group CORE
web
site for MAFF Fisheries Laboratories which studies Sellafield's sea pollution
levels around our coasts
Russia's version of Sellafield.
