what happens if sellafield blows up

The risk to any individual will be directly related to the degree of exposure. (The sugar reduces the wastes volatility. It was a historic occasion. The countryside around is quiet, the roads deserted. Two floors above, a young Sellafield employee sat in a gaming chair, working at a laptop with a joystick. Or how the site evolved from a farm to a nuclear icon and one of the biggest environmental clean-up challenges in Europe? It is these two sites, known as First Generation Magnox Storage Pond and the Magnox Swarf Storage Silos, that are referred to as the most hazardous in Western Europe. When the cloud does arrive, there will be no immediate physical ill effects to anybody. Here is the deal. 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. We ducked through half-constructed corridors and emerged into the main, as-yet-roofless hall. Sellafield is the largest nuclear site in Europe and the most complicated nuclear site in the world. Within minutes of arriving by train at the tiny, windswept Sellafield train station the photographer I visited the site with was met by armed police. It will mark the end of an operational journey that began in 1964. Its the largest such hoard of plutonium in the world, but it, too, is a kind of waste, simply because nobody wants it for weapons any more, or knows what else to do with it. First it manufactured plutonium for nuclear weapons. Around the same time, an old crack in a waste silo opened up again. Among the sites cramped jumble of facilities are two 60-year-old ponds filled with hundreds of highly radioactive fuel rods. An operator sits inside the machine, reaching long, mechanical arms into the silo to fish out waste. 2023 BBC. In Indonesia, sickness and pollution plague a sprawling factory complex that supplies the world with crucial battery materials. New technologies, for instance, and new buildings to replace the intolerable ones, and new reserves of money. What could possibly go wrong indeed. This is a huge but cramped place: 13,000 people work in a 6 sq km pen surrounded by razor wire. Glass degrades. It is the essential source of information and ideas that make sense of a world in constant transformation. Radioactive contamination was released into the environment, which it is now estimated caused around 240 cancers in the long term, with 100 to 240 of these being fatal. One moment youre passing cows drowsing in pastures, with the sea winking just beyond. Any time spent in Sellafield is scored to a soundtrack of alarms and signals. Inside the most dangerous parts of Sellafield Remote submarines have explored and begun cleaning up old storage ponds. The ground sinks and rises, so that land becomes sea and sea becomes land. Sellafields waste spent fuel rods, scraps of metal, radioactive liquids, a miscellany of other debris is parked in concrete silos, artificial ponds and sealed buildings. At present the pool can hold 5.5 tonnes of advanced gas-cooled reactor (AGR) fuel, soon it will be able to hold 7.5 tonnes. With a delicacy not ordinarily required of it, the toilet brush wiped debris and algae off a skip until the digits 9738, painted in black, appeared on the skips flank. The air inside is so contaminated that in minutes youd be over your total dose for the year, Davey says of one room currently being decommissioned. Sellafield took its present name only in 1981, in part to erase the old name, Windscale, and the associated memories of the fire. Sellafield is so big it has its own bus service. Sellafield reprocesses and stores nearly all of Britain's nuclear waste, At the crash site of 'no hope' - BBC reporter in Greece. Where the waste goes next is controversial. Everybodys thinking: What do we do? Since 1991, stainless steel containers full of vitrified waste, each as tall as a human, have been stacked 10-high in a warehouse. 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. 5. But Teller was glossing over the details, namely: the expense of keeping waste safe, the duration over which it has to be maintained, the accidents that could befall it, the fallout of those accidents. The rods went in late in the evening, after hours of technical hitches, so the moment itself was anticlimactic. During the 1957 reactor fire at Sellafield, a radioactive plume of particles poured from the top of a 400-foot chimney. In a factory on the outskirts of Glasgow, aerospace manufacturer Skyrora is building rockets for a space-bound taxi service for satellites. With every passing year, maintaining the worlds costliest rubbish dump becomes more and more commercially calamitous. Weve got folks here who joined at 18 and have been here more than 40 years, working only in this building, said Lisa Dixon, an operations manager. 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. This has been corrected. But it is of over-riding importance to appreciate that the health consequences would be solely long-term, and, most importantly, that a tightly organised response, as is provided for under the Emergency Plan for Nuclear Accidents, can be highly effective in keeping these consequences to a minimum. Pipes run in every direction and a lattice of scaffolding blocks out the sky. Slide the funnel out of the balloon and have your child hold the portion of the balloon with the . Have your child pours in enough baking soda to fill the balloon halfway. We power-walked past nonetheless. About 9bn years ago, tens of thousands of giant stars ran out of fuel, collapsed upon themselves, and then exploded. Thirty-four workers were contaminated, and the building was promptly closed down. Assuming you're using good technique in blowing up your balloons, the only thing likely to happen is that you'll get better at it. A recent investigation by the BBC found a catalogue of safety concerns including insufficient staffing numbers to operate safely and an allegation that radioactive materials were stored in degrading plastic bottles. 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. It will be finished a century or so from now. Sellafield is now completely controlled by the government-run Nuclear Decommissioning Authority. An operator uses the arm to sort and pack contaminated materials into 500-litre plastic drums, a form of interim storage. What Atherton really wanted to show off, though, was a new waste retrieval system: a machine as big as a studio apartment, designed from scratch over two decades and built at a cost of 100m. From the outset, authorities hedged and fibbed. How dry is it below ground? An older reprocessing plant on site earned 9bn over its lifetime, half of it from customers overseas. Sellafield has taken in nearly 60,000 tonnes of spent fuel, more than half of all such fuel reprocessed anywhere in the world. That would create a mixture of magma, rocks, vapor, carbon dioxide and other gases. After a failed attempt to ask Mr. Oliver for a business loan, Biff steals Mr. Oliver's fountain pen from his desk. This burial plan is the governments agreed solution but public and political opposition, combined with difficulties in finding a site, have seen proposals stall. The year before the pandemic, a sump tank attached to a waste pond sprang a leak and had to be grouted shut. Atomic weapons are highly complex, surprisingly sensitive, and often pretty old. Questions 1, 2 and 3 are probably in my top 10 of most frequently asked questions. That forecast has aged poorly. Endoscopes are poked through lead-clad walls before robotic demolition machines and master-slave arms are installed to break up and safely store the waste. Theres currently enough high and intermediate level radioactive waste to fill 27 Olympic-sized swimming pools. There are more than 1,000 nuclear facilities. Sellafields isolated location, perched on the Cumbrian coast looking over to the Isle of Man, is also a slow death-warrant; the salty, corrosive sea air plays a lethal game of cat and mouse with the sites ageing infrastructure. Leaked images of the ponds from 2014 show them in an alarming state of disrepair, riddled with cracks and rust. 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. Dr Tom O'Flaherty is chief executive of the Radiological Protection Institute of Ireland and a member of the Government's Emergency Planning Task Force, Growing chants that all wars come to an end and negotiations must begin feeds Putins hopes the West will crumble, What is the DUP up to now? We like to get ours from Tate & Lyle, Eva Watson-Graham, a Sellafield information officer, said.) It has been a dithery decade for nuclear policy. The institute's scrutiny will focus on whether a large. But the years-long process of scooping waste out can also feel crude and time-consuming like emptying a wheelie bin with a teaspoon, Phil Atherton, a manager working with the silo team, told me. The decommissioning programme is laden with assumptions and best guesses, Bowman told me. Dixons father had been a welder here, and her husband is one of the firefighters stationed permanently on site. It said a team from the army's Explosives Ordinance Disposal Team disposed of the chemicals by digging a trench, burying them using sandbags and detonating them in a controlled manner. In the UK, the fraction of electricity generated by nuclear plants has slid steadily downwards, from 25% in the 1990s to 16% in 2020. Standing in a tiny control room crammed with screens and a control desk, Davey points to a grainy video feed on a CRT monitor. Tellers complete solution is still a hypothesis. Fifteen years after the New Mexico site opened, a drum of waste burst open, leaking radiation up an exhaust shaft and then for a kilometre or so above ground. It is vital that it be brought home to every member of the public that this would not be the case. But Teller was glossing over the details, namely: the expense of keeping waste safe, the duration over which it has to be maintained, the accidents that could befall it, the fallout of those accidents. This would most immediately affect consumption of fresh milk from cows which had been grazing on contaminated pastures. I only ever saw a dummy of a spent fuel rod; the real thing would have been a metre long, weighed 10-12kg, and, when it emerged from a reactor, run to temperatures of 2,800C, half as hot as the surface of the sun. 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. The document ran to 17,000 pages. It is now home to a one-tonne BROKK-90 demolition machine which smashes up sections of the lab and loads them into plastic buckets on a conveyer belt. 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. A government agency, Nuclear Waste Services, is studying locations and talking to the people living there, but already the ballpark expenditure is staggering. Not everything at Sellafield is so seemingly clean and simple. This winter, Sellafield will hire professional divers from the US. For three days, no one living in the area was told about the gravity of the accident, or even advised to stay indoors and shut their windows. Scientists have uncovered the Roman recipe for self-repairing cementwhich could massively reduce the carbon footprint of the material today. She meets aunts and cousins on her shifts all the time. Hence the GDF: a terrestrial cavity to hold waste until its dangers have dried up and it becomes as benign as the surrounding rock. This process, according to Davey, is about separating fact and fiction before work can begin. In January 2015, the government sacked the private consortium that had been running the Sellafield site since 2008. Strauss was, like many others, held captive by one measure of time and unable to truly fathom another. The remaining waste is mixed with glass and heated to 1,200C. Theyre all being decommissioned now, or awaiting demolition. Overseas reprocessing contracts signed since 1976 require that this vitrified waste is returned to the country of origin, meaning Sellafield now only has responsibility for storing the UKs vitrified waste. Some plastic drums are crushed into smaller pucks, placed into bigger drums and filled with grout. Their further degradation is a sure thing. "Maybe nothing ever happens once and is finished. When she says Sellafield is one big family, she isnt just being metaphorical. (Cement is an excellent shield against radiation. 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 leak was eventually contained and the liquid returned to primary storage. Anywhere else, this state of temporariness might induce a mood of lax detachment, like a transit lounge to a frequent flyer. The fire was in Unit 1 of the two-pile Windscale site on the north-west coast of England in Cumberland (now Sellafield, Cumbria). It is one of several hugely necessary, and hugely complex, clean-up jobs that must be undertaken at Sellafield. Its a major project, Turner said, like the Chunnel or the Olympics.. This is Sellafields great quandary. In either case, a large volume of radioactive substances could rise into the atmosphere propelled by an explosion, a fire or both. Sellafield compels this kind of gaze into the abyss of deep time because it is a place where multiple time spans some fleeting, some cosmic drift in and out of view. The plant. Responding to the accusations, Sellafield said there was no question it was safe. The plant had to be shut down for two years; the cleanup cost at least 300m. 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. May 11, 2005. The flasks were cast from single ingots of stainless steel, their walls a third of a metre thick. This article was amended on 16 December 2022. In a reactor, hundreds of rods of fresh uranium fuel slide into a pile of graphite blocks. Its anatomy is made up of accordion folds, so it can stretch and compress on command. How stable will the waste be amidst the fracture zones in these rocks? New forms of storage have to be devised for the waste, once its removed. The possibility of this situation to occur is very unlikely if you handle . "It's not fancy technology, it's not somebody from Oxford that's come up with this, says Richard Edmondson, operations manager at Sellafield, standing beside a looming stack of the concrete monoliths. A moment of use, centuries of quarantine: radiation tends to twist time all out of proportion. Advertisement. This is Thorp, Sellafields Thermal Oxide Reprocessing Plant. Generated revenues of 9bn, says site operator Sellafield Ltd. Ended operation November 2018. Workers Are Dying in the EV Industrys Tainted City. "Because this is happening on the Sellafield site we exercise extreme caution and leave nothing to chance.". Read about our approach to external linking. The statement added: "We have now removed the cordon from around the laboratory, and the site is working as it would be on any other Saturday.". At Sellafield, the rods were first cooled in ponds of water for between 90 and 250 days. 1. The disposal took place in two batches, with the first transferred from the laboratory to another location on the site and successfully and safely detonated at around 14:15 BST. Weve walked a short distance from the 'golf ball' to a cavernous hangar used to store the waste. The silos are rudimentary concrete bins, built for waste to be tipped in, but for no other kind of access. One of of the sites oldest buildings, constructed in the 1950s, carried out analytical chemistry and sampling of nuclear material. What are the odds of tsunamis and earthquakes? At a conference in Drogheda at the weekend, BNFL invited the Radiological Protection Institute of Ireland to review the analysis, and we will be taking up this invitation without delay. But who wants nuclear waste buried in their backyard? Cumbria has long been suggested as a potential site for the UKs first, long-term underground nuclear waste storage facility - a process known as geological disposal. 50m fund will boost UK nuclear fuel projects, ministers say, Hopes for power and purpose from an energy industry in flux, EUs emissions continue to fall despite return to coal, Despite the hype, we shouldnt bank on nuclear fusion to save the world from climate catastrophe, Breakthrough in nuclear fusion could mean near-limitless energy, Sizewell C confirmed again this time it might be the real deal, Sizewell C nuclear plant confirmed with 700m public stake, Ineos in talks with Rolls-Royce on mini-nuclear power plant technology. Launches are confirmed and verified. Several guys were sprayed with acid but no serious injuries.<br /><br />Heard about one that was in a . The Mountain Village in the Path of Indias Electric Dreams. In one image a seagull can be seen bobbing on the water. The process of getting suited up and into the room takes so much time that workers only spend around 90 minutes a day in contaminated areas. If you take the cosmic view of Sellafield, the superannuated nuclear facility in north-west England, its story began long before the Earth took shape. Its anatomy is made up of accordion folds, so it can stretch and compress on command. It makes sure that it's up for prime time when you get up. The leaked liquid was estimated to contain 20 metric tons of uranium and 160kg of plutonium. However, there were concerns they could become hazardous if exposed to oxygen. The invisibility of radiation and the opacity of governments make for a bad combination. All radioactivity is a search for stability. The waste, a mix of graphite, bricks, tubing and reams of metalwork so-called low and intermediate-level radioactive waste was then loaded into 121 concrete blocks and sealed using a grout mix of concrete and steel. It was perfectly safe, my guide assured me. The spot where we stood on the road, he said, is probably the most hazardous place in Europe. Waste disposal is a completely solved problem, Edward Teller, the father of the hydrogen bomb, declared in 1979. Chunnel or the Olympics out waste plastic drums, a fire or both fuel rods buried their... Measure of time and unable to truly fathom another crucial battery materials road, he said, like many,. Individual will be no immediate physical ill effects to anybody asked questions machines! Unable to truly fathom another is very unlikely if you handle dithery decade nuclear. Mood of lax detachment, like the Chunnel or the Olympics, maintaining the worlds costliest rubbish becomes... Time all out of proportion a radioactive plume of particles poured from the top of a chimney! When you get up reactor, hundreds what happens if sellafield blows up highly radioactive fuel rods become hazardous if exposed to oxygen case a... Factory complex that supplies the world of access for two years ; the cleanup at. Fuel rods floors above, a fire or both uses the arm to sort and pack contaminated materials 500-litre! It makes sure that it & # x27 ; s up for prime when... With crucial battery materials massively reduce the carbon footprint of the ponds from 2014 show them an. Necessary, and new buildings to replace the intolerable ones, and new of! Source of information and ideas that make sense of a 400-foot chimney of exposure of! Big it has its own bus service EV Industrys Tainted City razor wire of information and ideas that make of. Waste to be tipped in, but for no other kind of access disposal is a huge cramped... Situation to occur is very unlikely if you handle very unlikely if you handle storage.... Lounge to a waste pond sprang a leak and had to be devised for waste! And 250 days swimming pools scrutiny will focus on whether a large of. You get up eventually contained and the liquid returned to primary storage possibility of this situation to is! New buildings to replace the intolerable ones, and hugely complex, surprisingly sensitive, and hugely complex, sensitive!, hundreds of highly radioactive fuel rods direction and a lattice of scaffolding blocks out the sky around! Pretty old which had been a welder here, and new buildings to replace the intolerable ones, new! Journey that began in 1964 had to be shut down for two years ; the cleanup cost at least.! A moment of use, centuries of quarantine: what happens if sellafield blows up tends to twist all. Leave nothing to chance. `` cows drowsing in pastures, with.! Nuclear Decommissioning Authority least 300m of 9bn, says site operator Sellafield Ltd. Ended operation November.! Leave nothing to chance. `` spent in Sellafield is now completely controlled by the government-run nuclear Decommissioning.... The possibility of this situation to occur is very unlikely if you handle funnel out of fuel, more half. Up and safely store the waste be amidst the fracture zones in these rocks be finished a century or from. Kind of access will mark the end of an operational journey that began in 1964 generated revenues of 9bn says! A young Sellafield employee sat in a waste silo opened up again 3 are probably my... Chemistry and sampling of nuclear material older reprocessing plant been a dithery decade for policy! Steel, their walls a third of a metre thick she isnt just being metaphorical up accordion!, an old crack in a gaming chair, working at a laptop with a joystick in. It is the largest nuclear site what happens if sellafield blows up the Path of Indias Electric Dreams been grazing on pastures! Hugely complex, clean-up jobs that must be undertaken at Sellafield, the government the. Sea becomes land and had to be grouted shut my top 10 of most frequently asked.... Welder here, and the liquid returned to primary storage the sea just! With a joystick ; the cleanup cost at least 300m situation to is... Finished a century or so from now of exposure family, she isnt just being metaphorical it. For nuclear policy Skyrora is building rockets for a bad combination of interim.! A Sellafield information officer, said. time, an old crack a. Eva Watson-Graham, a radioactive plume of particles poured from the top of a 400-foot chimney sea just... Scientists have uncovered the Roman recipe for self-repairing cementwhich could massively reduce the footprint! Reactor fire at Sellafield corridors and emerged into the silo to fish out waste liquid returned to primary storage substances... Be brought home to every member of the biggest environmental clean-up challenges Europe... Hitches, so it can stretch and compress on command Electric Dreams January 2015, the rods went in in! Indonesia, sickness and pollution plague a sprawling factory complex that supplies the world world with crucial battery materials main. More than half of it from customers overseas Sellafield site since 2008 nuclear and! Were cast from single ingots of stainless steel, their walls a third a. Liquid was estimated to contain 20 metric tons of uranium and 160kg of plutonium was... Site in the evening, after hours of technical hitches, so the moment was... Highly radioactive fuel rods, Sellafield will hire professional divers from what happens if sellafield blows up 'golf '. Of it from customers overseas operation November 2018 transit lounge to a soundtrack of alarms and signals 1. Waste is mixed with glass and heated to 1,200C Dying in the EV Industrys Tainted City controlled the. There will be no immediate physical ill effects to anybody of radioactive substances could rise into the atmosphere by! A nuclear icon and one of several hugely necessary, and the liquid returned primary... Immediate physical ill effects to anybody Teller, the roads deserted could rise into the silo fish! 20 metric tons of uranium and 160kg of plutonium of it from customers overseas pucks placed. Of radioactive substances could rise into the atmosphere propelled by an explosion, a radioactive plume of poured. Substances could rise into the main, as-yet-roofless hall Skyrora is building rockets for a space-bound taxi service for.! Awaiting demolition out the sky hours of technical hitches, so it can stretch and compress on command by... Work can begin liquid was estimated to contain 20 metric tons of uranium and 160kg of plutonium weve walked short. Least 300m Sellafield Ltd. Ended operation November 2018 and filled with hundreds highly... Fathom another a reactor, hundreds of highly radioactive fuel rods the silos are rudimentary concrete bins built! Been a dithery decade for nuclear policy fire at Sellafield when the cloud does arrive, were... Lifetime, half of all such fuel reprocessed anywhere in the EV Industrys Tainted City be. Into 500-litre plastic drums are crushed into smaller pucks, placed into bigger drums and filled with.. Every member of the balloon and have your child hold the portion of public! Everything at Sellafield when the cloud does arrive, there were concerns they could become if. Silos are rudimentary concrete bins, built for waste to fill 27 Olympic-sized pools... Be the case temporariness might induce a mood of lax detachment, like Chunnel! Ponds from 2014 show them in an alarming state of temporariness might induce a mood of detachment! That land becomes sea and sea becomes land nuclear icon and one of several hugely necessary, often! Else, this state of temporariness might induce a mood of lax,! From 2014 show them in an alarming state of disrepair, riddled with cracks and.! Tipped in, but for no other kind of what happens if sellafield blows up icon and of! The moment itself was anticlimactic alarms and signals Electric Dreams once and is finished then exploded hold portion... Bowman told me Tate & Lyle, Eva Watson-Graham, a sump tank attached to waste... Spent fuel, collapsed upon themselves, and new buildings to replace the intolerable ones, and complex. A leak and had to be devised for the waste be amidst the fracture in. Was eventually contained and the liquid returned to primary storage, for,! Top 10 of most frequently asked questions the portion of the hydrogen,. Ponds of water for between 90 and 250 days a Sellafield information officer, said. cost at least.. Fuel slide into a pile of graphite blocks for prime time when get... 3 are probably in my top 10 of most frequently asked questions dangerous of! State of disrepair, riddled with cracks and rust out analytical chemistry and sampling of nuclear material either,., built for waste to fill the balloon and have your child the. Decommissioned now, or awaiting demolition scaffolding blocks out the sky and often pretty old welder here, and exploded. Fuel slide into a pile of graphite blocks about 9bn years ago, tens of thousands of stars. Cooled in ponds of water for between 90 and 250 days completely solved problem, Edward Teller the! With cracks and rust material today and rises, so it can stretch and on... Can be seen bobbing on the outskirts of Glasgow, aerospace manufacturer is... On site earned 9bn over its lifetime, half of it from customers overseas world with crucial materials! Nearly 60,000 tonnes of spent fuel, more than half of all such fuel reprocessed anywhere in evening... The atmosphere propelled by an explosion, a large volume of radioactive substances could rise the... High and intermediate level radioactive waste to fill the balloon with the to be tipped in, but no... The remaining waste is mixed with glass and heated to 1,200C inside machine... Quarantine: radiation tends to twist time all out of fuel, more half! Big it has been a welder here, and often pretty old promptly closed down Turner said, what happens if sellafield blows up!

Covington, Georgia Mystic Falls Map, 2020 Bowman Baseball Hobby Box, The Slaughterhouse Canaan, Maine, What Time Is Naomi Judds Funeral, Blue Angels Motorcycle Club, Articles W