What goes on at Sellafield?
Sellafield is the site of various nuclear facilities which include two operating reprocessing plants and the Sellafield MOX fuel fabrication plant, but there are no longer any operating nuclear power stations on the site. In December 1945 the British cabinet took the decision to build, at Sellafield (originally known as Windscale), the Windscale piles to produce plutonium for Britain’s bomb. Since then the Sellafield skyline has been dominated by these two tall chimney-like structures. In October 1957 the uranium fuel in one of the reactors caught fire, causing the release of large amounts of radioactive iodine, and other radioactive materials into the atmosphere. This was undoubtedly one of the world’s worst nuclear accidents, which led to some 2 million litres of milk from an area of more than 500 square kilometres being poured away into rivers and the sea. The two reactors were closed down. The United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority is currently attempting to plan how these two reac
