In other areas of Sellafield, the levels of radiation are so extreme that no humans can ever enter. This glass is placed into a waste container and welded shut. 2023 BBC. 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.. All rights reserved. You see the little arm at the end of it? Cassidy said. Train tracks criss-cross the ground as we pass Calder Hall and park up next to a featureless red and black building. Crab Supernova Explosion [1080p] Watch on. Planning for the disposal of high-level waste has to take into account the drift of continents and the next ice age. All rights reserved. This was Britain's worst-ever nuclear accident, but no one was evacuated, no iodine pills were distributed, work went on and most people were not even told about thefire. Sellafield says vitrification ensures safe medium-to-long-term storage, but even glass degrades over time. For six weeks, Sellafields engineers prepared for the task, rehearsing on a 3D model, ventilating the cell, setting up a stream of air to blow away the molten metal, ensuring that nothing caught fire from the lasers sparks. Sellafield currently costs the UK taxpayer 1.9 billion a year to run. The GDF will effectively entomb not just decades of nuclear waste but also the decades-old idea that atomic energy will be both easy and cheap the very idea that drove the creation of Sellafield, where the worlds earliest nuclear aspirations began. More than 140 tonnes of plutonium are stored in giant. What happens at Sellafield in the UK? - KOOLOADER.COM 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. Dr Thompson, who was based in the UK for 10 years and gave evidence at the 1977 Windscale inquiry into reprocessing at Sellafield, and the Sizewell inquiry, is an expert on the potential fallout from a nuclear accident or deliberate act of terrorism. 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. 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. Is Sellafield worse than Chernobyl? 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 huge risk of contamination means human exposure cant be risked. Crumbling, near-derelict buildings are home to decades worth of accumulated radioactive waste - a toxic legacy from the early years of the nuclear age. "Typical nuclear, we over-engineer everything, Edmondson says, taking out a dosimeter and sliding it nonchalantly along the face of one box. Dr Thompson said: "A civilian nuclear facility is a potential radiological weapon if the facility contains a large amount of radioactive material that can be released into the environment. It was a historic occasion. A true monster of a launch vehicle, it generated over 33 million newtons of thrust at liftoff and carried 2.5 million kilograms of fuel and oxidizer. 6 I was a non-desirable person on site.". 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. From that liquor, technicians separated out uranium and plutonium, powdery like cumin. What do Sellafield Ltd do? - Thecrucibleonscreen.com 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. In 1983, a Sellafield pipeline discharged half a tonne of radioactive solvent into the sea. Amid tight security at the Sellafield nuclear plant in Cumbria, is a store holding most of Britain's stockpile of plutonium. 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. Well, from the interviews with Raaz, Reed and former Sellafield boss Barry Snelson, there isn't any. In January 2015, the government sacked the private consortium that had been running the Sellafield site since 2008. Seagulls chatter, the hum of machinery is constant, a pipe zig-zagging across the ground vents steam. Before leaving every building, we ran Geiger counters over ourselves always remembering to scan the tops of our heads and the soles of our feet and these clacked like rattlesnakes. Twice, we followed a feebly lit tunnel only to turn around and drive back up. This process, according to Davey, is about separating fact and fiction before work can begin. It took two years and 5m to develop this instrument. The UKs plans are at an earlier stage. If the alarm falls silent, it means the criticality alarm has stopped working. Some industrial machines have soothing names; the laser snake is not one of them. The towers of blocks are spaced to allow you to walk between them, but reach the end and youre in total darkness. When she says Sellafield is one big family, she isnt just being metaphorical. It would have . Video, 00:05:44, Ros Atkins breaks down the BBC chairman loan row, Schoolboy, 13, stops bus after driver passes out. A moment of use, centuries of quarantine: radiation tends to twist time all out of proportion. 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. In a reactor, hundreds of rods of fresh uranium fuel slide into a pile of graphite blocks. But the economy of the region is more dependent on nuclear than ever before; the MP, Jamie Reed, is a former press officer for Sellafield and no one dares say anything critical if they want to keep a job. The very day before I visited Sellafield, in mid-July, the reprocessing came to an end as well. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. What would happen if Sellafield exploded? If an emergency does occur, radioactive airborne contamination may be You see, an explosion usually inflicts damage in two major ways . 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