Within reach, so to speak, of the humans who eventually came along circa 300,000BC, and who mined the uranium beginning in the 1500s, learned about its radioactivity in 1896 and started feeding it into their nuclear reactors 70-odd years ago, making electricity that could be relayed to their houses to run toasters and light up Christmas trees. The only hint of what each box contains is a short serial number stamped on one side that can only be decoded using a formula held at three separate locations and printed on vellum. This is what creates a Type II supernova: the core-collapse of an ultra-massive star. What looked like a smart line of business back in the 1950s has now turned out to be anything but. The reprocessing plants end was always coming. Just like in 1957. In the water, the skips full of used fuel rods were sometimes stacked three deep, and when one was placed in or pulled out, rods tended to tumble out on to the floor of the pond. The invisibility of radiation and the opacity of governments make for a bad combination. More dangerous still are the 20 tonnes of melted fuel inside a reactor that caught fire in 1957 and has been sealed off and left alone ever since. Once uranium and plutonium were extracted from used fuel rods, it was thought, they could be stored safely and perhaps eventually resold, to make money on the side. It was perfectly safe, my guide assured me. The snake, though, could slither right in through a hole drilled into a cell wall, and right up to a two-metre-high, double-walled steel vat once used to dissolve fuel in acid. The tanks contain high level radioactive waste in the form of self heating, acidic liquid that requries continuous cooling and agitation.". They dont know how much time theyll need to mop up all the waste, or how long theyll have to store it, or what Sellafield will look like afterwards. In 1983, a Sellafield pipeline discharged half a tonne of radioactive solvent into the sea. That one there, thats the second most dangerous, says Andrew Cooney, technical manager at Sellafield, nodding in the direction of another innocuous-looking site on the vast complex. When you asked, 'How many would you expect in a community of 2,000 people?' Seagulls chatter, the hum of machinery is constant, a pipe zig-zagging across the ground vents steam. Of course the sun is only about 4.6 billion years old, half way through its lifespan of about 10 bil. Video, 00:05:44Ros Atkins breaks down the BBC chairman loan row, One-minute World News. (That 121bn price tag may swell further.) Sellafield Ltd is a wholly owned subsidiary of the NDA. A report from Steve Healey, the chief fire officer for Cumbria, revealed the affected area covers a 50-kilometre circular zone from an epicentre at Sellafield. Sellafield nuclear site evacuated and bomb squad called to explosive It will be finished a century or so from now. The building is so dangerous that it has been fitted with an alarm that sounds constantly to let everyone know they are safe. Sellafield is now completely controlled by the government-run Nuclear Decommissioning Authority. 2023 BBC. It had to be disposed of, but it was too big to remove in one piece. Union leader and ex-Commando Cyril McManus says he thought the fire might mean the workers got a day off; Wally Eldred, the scientist who went on to be head of laboratories at BNFL, says he was told to "carry on as normal"; and chemist Marjorie Higham says she paid no attention. The highly radioactive fuel is then transferred next door into an even bigger pool where its stored and cooled for between three and five years. The buckets are then fed through an enclosed hole in the wall to a waiting RAPTOR master-slave robot arm encased in a box made of steel and 12mm reinforced glass. New forms of storage have to be devised for the waste, once its removed. The government had to buy up milk from farmers living in 500 sq km around Sellafield and dump it in the Irish Sea. Both buildings, for the most part, remain standing to this day. At first scientists believed that the fog near Saturn was coming from Saturn's moon, Titan, but on closer examination it appears that Saturn is undergoing a cataclysm and it could destroy itself in the next ten months. Thorps legacy will be the highly radioactive sludge it leaves behind: the final three per cent of waste it cant reprocess. Then they were skinned of their cladding and dissolved in boiling nitric acid. All radioactivity is a search for stability. The humblest items a paper towel or a shoe cover used for just a second in a nuclear environment can absorb radioactivity, but this stuff is graded as low-level waste; it can be encased in a block of cement and left outdoors. After a brief, initial flash, Betelgeuse will brighten tremendously . It would have been like Chernobyl there was contamination everywhere, on the golf course, in the milk, in chickens but it was quickly forgotten about," says McManus. The contingency planning that scientists do today the kind that wasnt done when the industry was in its infancy contends with yawning stretches of time. The area includes as far south as Walney, east as Bowness and north almost to the Scottish border. But even that will be only a provisional arrangement, lasting a few decades. As well as being filled with waste during the early years of the nuclear age, Sellafields ponds were also overwhelmed with spent fuel during the 1974 miners strike. Anywhere downwind of Sellafield during the releases would be rendered uninhabitable probably for generations and people caught in the fall-out would have a greatly increased chance of getting . So itll float down to the bottom of the pond, pick up a nuclear rod that has fallen out of a skip, and put it back into the skip. Sometimes, though, a human touch is required. What would happen if Sellafield exploded? At one point, when we were walking through the site, a member of the Sellafield team pointed out three different waste storage facilities within a 500-metre radius. If they degrade too much, waste will seep out of them, poisoning the Cumbrian soil and water. Its 13,500 working parts together weigh 350 tonnes. (modern), Dismantling Sellafield: the epic task of shutting down a nuclear site. A 10-storey building called B204 had been Sellafields first reprocessing facility, but in 1973, a rogue chemical reaction filled the premises with radioactive gas. Of the five nuclear stations still producing power, only one will run beyond 2028. As well as the threat of a bomb, missile or hijacked plane hitting Sellafield, Dr Thompson raises the possibility of a rogue worker or terrorist infiltrator at Sellafield sabotaging the cooling equipment which prevents the stored waste from boiling and causing a massive radioactive release. What would happen if Sellafield exploded? It might not have a home yet, but the countrys first geological disposal facility will be vast: surface buildings are expected to cover 1km sq and underground tunnels will stretch for up to 20 km sq. What If the Sun Exploded Tomorrow? - YouTube But the boxes, for now, are safe. The expenditure rises because structures age, growing more rickety, more prone to mishap. "This is a 60-year-old building, records are non-existent, says Rich Davey, a mechanical responsible engineer at Sellafield. Beginning in 1956, spent rods came to Cumbria from plants across the UK, but also by sea from customers in Italy and Japan. We sweltered even before we put on heavy boots and overalls to visit the reprocessing plant, where, until the previous day, technicians had culled uranium and plutonium out of spent fuel. Environmental campaigners argue burying nuclear waste underground is a disaster waiting to happen. That would contaminate fisheries and travel north on currents, making fishing in western Scotland impossible. For nearly 30 years, few people knew that the fire dispersed not just radioactive iodine but also polonium, far more deadly. He was manoeuvring an ROV fitted with a toilet brush a regular brush, bought at the store, he said, just kind of reinforced with a bit of plastic tube. All rights reserved. How stable will the waste be amidst the fracture zones in these rocks? This burial plan is the governments agreed solution but public and political opposition, combined with difficulties in finding a site, have seen proposals stall. Depending on the direction of the wind, cities like Newcastle, Edinburgh and Leeds would be well within fallout range, as would be Dublin. On April 20, 2005 Sellafield workers found a huge leak at Thorp, which first started in July 2004. And thats the least zany thing about it. Dr Thompson's report, sent this week in response to the committee's call for new evidence following a report it published last month, is likely further to alarm the Irish government, which has repeatedly protested about danger from the high level waste tanks at Sellafield. He was right, but only in theory. From that liquor, technicians separated out uranium and plutonium, powdery like cumin. The programme painted a negative picture of safety that we do not recognise, the statement continued. The flasks were cast from single ingots of stainless steel, their walls a third of a metre thick. (modern), Archive British Path footage of a 1957 news report on radioactive dust escaping from Windscale. A pipe on the outside of a building had cracked, and staff had planted 10ft-tall sheets of lead into the ground around it to shield people from the radiation. Once interred, the waste will be left alone for tens of thousands of years, while its radioactivity cools. The Commons defence committee in its report said that "attention has particularly focused on perceived vulnerability of nuclear installations". The two liquids mixed and exploded, destroying the orbiter with it. In 2005, in an older reprocessing plant at Sellafield, 83,000 litres of radioactive acid enough to fill a few hundred bathtubs dripped out of a ruptured pipe. Video, 00:01:03, Up Next. "It's so political that science doesn't matter. The UK is currently home to 112 tonnes of what is the most toxic substance ever created - and most of it is held in a modern grey building to one side of the site. From the outset, authorities hedged and fibbed. A terrorist attack on Sellafield could render the north of England uninhabitable and release 100 times the radioactivity produced by the nuclear accident at Chernobyl in 1986, the House of Commons defence committee was told yesterday. Responding to the accusations, Sellafield said there was no question it was safe. Everybodys thinking: What do we do? Once cooled, it forms a solid block of glass. "I often think there will have been a Seascale cluster of leukaemia because that's where the fallout from the big chimneys was closest. Discarded cladding, peeled off fuel rods like banana-skins, fills a cluster of 16-metre-deep concrete silos partially sunk into the earth. If you stand on the floor above them, Watson-Graham said, you can still sense a murmuring warmth on the soles of your shoes. Germany had planned to abandon nuclear fuel by the end of this year, but in October, it extended that deadline to next spring. Every month one of 13 easy-to-access boxes is lifted onto a platform and inspected on all sides for signs of damage and leakage. Dismantling Sellafield: the epic task of shutting down a nuclear site Those neutrons generate more neutrons out of uranium atoms, which generate still more neutrons out of other uranium atoms, and so on, the whole process begetting vast quantities of heat that can turn water into steam and drive turbines. In late 2021, Posiva submitted all its studies and contingency plans to the Finnish government to seek an operating license. This is a huge but cramped place: 13,000 people work in a 6 sq km pen surrounded by razor wire. Here's Dick Raaz, the outgoing head of the waste depository: "The good news about radioactive waste is it self-destructs, if you just give it long enough." Everyone in West Cumbria has a relationship with Sellafield. Some of these structures are growing, in the industrys parlance, intolerable, atrophied by the sea air, radiation and time itself. They dont know exactly what theyll find in the silos and ponds. SATURN READY TO EXPLODE - Weekly World News Video, 00:01:03Inside the most dangerous parts of Sellafield, Up Next. But who wants nuclear waste buried in their backyard? When she says Sellafield is one big family, she isnt just being metaphorical. It was useless with people, too. It feels like the most manmade place in the world. Sellafield, formerly a Royal Ordnance Factory, began producing plutonium in 1947. The Windscale gas-cooled reactor took nine years to decommission. The source of the leak, as America soon learned, was traced to a tiny rubber part called an O-ring, which formed the seal . The remaining waste is mixed with glass and heated to 1,200C. Two shuttles run clockwise and counterclockwise, ferrying employees between buildings. The solution, for now, is vitrification. The ground sinks and rises, so that land becomes sea and sea becomes land. If the geology is simple, and were disposing of just high- and intermediate-level waste, then were thinking 20bn, said Jonathan Turner, a geologist with Nuclear Waste Services. The leaked liquid was estimated to contain 20 metric tons of uranium and 160kg of plutonium. From an operational nuclear facility, Sellafield turned into a full-time storage depot but an uncanny, precarious one, filled with toxic nuclear waste that has to be kept contained at any cost. No, I am not anti-nuclear, but my goodness, I think they could have made a better fist of it if they'd tried harder," he says. To take apart an ageing nuclear facility, you have to put a lot of other things together first. It took two years and 5m to develop this instrument. The short-termism of policymaking neglected any plans that had to be made for the abominably lengthy, costly life of radioactive waste. Video, 00:00:49Baby grabs Kate's handbag during royal walkabout, Police form chain to save woman trapped in sinking car. For most of the latter half of the 20th century, one of Sellafields chief tasks was reprocessing. It recklessly dumped contaminated water out to sea and filled old mines with radioactive waste. (modern). The snake hasnt been deployed since 2015, because other, more urgent tasks lie at hand. Sellafield now requires 2bn a year to maintain. What is Sellafield? - Cleaning up our nuclear past: faster, safer and So in a couple of thousand years the Earth and the Solar System would be enveloped in hot, highly ionized gas. A government study concluded that radiation from Sellafield wasnt to blame. Flung out by such explosions, trillions of tonnes of uranium traversed the cold universe and wound up near our slowly materialising solar system. In other areas of Sellafield, the levels of radiation are so extreme that no humans can ever enter. Perhaps, the study suggested, the leukaemia had an undetected, infectious cause. In 1947, the Sellafield site opened with a single mission - the production of plutonium, a radioactive chemical element for use in Britain's nuclear deterrent. And the waste keeps piling up. If Onkalo begins operating on schedule, in 2025, it will be the worlds first GDF for spent fuel and high-level reactor waste 6,500 tonnes of the stuff, all from Finnish nuclear stations. This year, though, governments felt the pressure to redo their sums when sanctions on Russia abruptly choked off supplies of oil and gas. By its own admission, it is home to one of the largest inventories of untreated waste, including 140 tonnes of civil plutonium, the largest stockpile in the world. At the moment, Nuclear Waste Services is in discussions with four communities about the potential to host a GDF. Instead of bumbling, British, gung ho pioneers, Sellafield is now run by corporate PR folk and slick American businessmen. Its roots in weaponry explain the high security and the arrogance of its inward-looking early management. But at Sellafield, with all its caches of radioactivity, the thought of catastrophe is so ever-present that you feel your surroundings with a heightened keenness. The stories, edited by Hunter Davies, suggest that much of what happened then is inconceivable now. That would contaminate fisheries and travel north on currents, making fishing in western Scotland impossible. Things could get much worse. After its fat, six-metre-long body slinks out of its cage-like housing, it can rear up in serpentine fashion, as if scanning its surroundings for prey. Commissioned in 1952, waste was still being dumped into the 20 metre-long pond as recently as 1992. Anywhere downwind of Sellafield during the releases would be rendered uninhabitable probably for generations and people caught in the fall-out would have a greatly increased chance of getting cancer. The snakes face is the size and shape of a small dinner plate, with a mouth through which it fires a fierce, purple shaft of light. The sheer force of these supernova detonations mashed together the matter in the stars cores, turning lighter elements like iron into heavier ones like uranium. Nothing is produced at Sellafield any more. An earlier version said the number of cancer deaths caused by the Windscale fire had been revised upwards to 240 over time. It is here that spent fuel from the UK and overseas nuclear power plants is reprocessed and prepared for storage. Video, 00:01:15Schoolboy, 13, stops bus after driver passes out, Baby grabs Kate's handbag during royal walkabout. If the Saturn V went boom: The effects of a Saturn V - The Space Review Amid tight security at the Sellafield nuclear plant in Cumbria, is a store holding most of Britain's stockpile of plutonium. The lab operated in the 1970s and produced the Plutonium-238 used in early cardiac pacemakers and as a primary fuel source for Nasas deep space missions where solar energy isnt available. So much had to be considered, Mustonen said. Sellafield What to do in a radiation emergency booklet - Cumbria The book includes interviews with Sellafield foremen, scientists, managers, farmers, labourers, anti-nuclear activists, the vicar, the MP and bank manager, policemen, physicists, welders and accountants. Why Do Few Missiles Explode Before Hitting The Target? - Science ABC Sellafield Ltd said in a statement: "During a routine inspection of chemical substances stored on the Sellafield site, a small amount of chemicals (organic peroxide) were identified as requiring . Eventually, the plant will be taller than Westminster Abbey and as part of the decommissioning process, this structure too will be torn down once it has finished its task, decades from now. Sellafield: 'It was all contaminated: milk, chickens, the golf course The pipes and steam lines, many from the 1960s, kept fracturing. The sheer force of these supernova detonations mashed together the matter in the stars cores, turning lighter elements like iron into heavier ones like uranium. The day I visited Sellafield was the UKs hottest ever. What would happen if Sellafield exploded? In Lab 188c engineers are using a combination of demolition robots and robot arms to safely demolish and store contaminated equipment. The most vulnerable part of the facilities at Sellafield, dating back to the 1950s, contain giant tanks of high level radioactive waste which has to be constantly cooled and stirred to prevent a chain reaction. Video, 00:00:33, Watch: Flames engulf key bank in Sudan's capital, Drone captures moment lost child is found. Sellafield is one of the most contaminated industrial sites in Europe. What If 7.16M subscribers 1.9M views 3 years ago #Betelgeuse At about 950 times bigger than our Sun, Betelgeuse is one of the biggest stars in our Universe..