We’ve walked a short distance from the 'golf ball' to a cavernous hangar used to store the waste. Now it needs to clean-up, Sellafield houses more than 1,000 nuclear facilities on its six square kilometre site, Sellafield has its own train station, police force and fire service, Some buildings at Sellafield date back to the late-1950s when the UK was racing to build its first nuclear bomb, Low and intermediate-level radioactive waste is temporarially being stored in 50-tonne concrete blocks, Much of Sellafield's decomissioning work is done by robots to protect humans from deadly levels of radiation, The cavernous Thorp facility reprocesses spent nuclear fuel from the UK and overseas, Cumbria County Council rejected an application. Environmental campaigners argue burying nuclear waste underground is a disaster waiting to happen. Two shuttles run clockwise and counterclockwise, ferrying employees between buildings. When records couldn’t be found, Sellafield staff conducted interviews with former employees. And the waste keeps piling up. Among the site’s cramped jumble of facilities are two 60-year-old ponds filled with hundreds of highly radioactive fuel rods. It has its own railway station and, until September 11, 2001, its visitor centre was a major tourist attraction visited by an average of 1,000 people per day. The site was too complex to be run privately, officials argued. 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. Sellafield is now completely controlled by the government-run Nuclear Decommissioning Authority. The countryside around is quiet, the roads deserted. “The automation ensures the inspector can concentrate on areas of potential concern and use their skills to efficiently make an accurate assessment of conditions.”. This glass is placed into a waste container and welded shut. Structures that will eventually be dismantled piece-by-piece look close to collapse – but they can’t fall down. The main activities at the plant include reprocessing of spent fuel from nuclear power reactors and storage of nuclear waste. 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. On April 20, 2005 Sellafield workers found a huge leak at Thorp, which first started in July 2004. “The air inside is so contaminated that in minutes you’d be over your total dose for the year,” Davey says of one room currently being decommissioned. Sellafield's high-level nuclear waste storage is one of the most concentrated sources of radioactivity anywhere in the world. Inside Sellafield: how the UK's most dangerous nuclear site is cleaning up its act, Sellafield is home to 80% of the UK's nuclear waste and some of the world's most hazardous buildings. And so they must be maintained and kept standing. But who wants nuclear waste buried in their backyard? Where the waste goes next is controversial. The leaked liquid was estimated to contain 20 metric tons of uranium and 160kg of plutonium. The waste comes in on rails. The inspection technique uses in-situ automated technology in dark store environments where traditional communication channels or power sources are absent. The room on the screens is littered with rubbish and smashed up bits of equipment. View all 2019 waste stream data sheets for Sellafield Safely decommissioning a 1950s nuclear waste storage facility Known as one of the four most hazardous buildings in Western Europe, the Sellafield Pile Fuel Cladding Silo (PFCS) was commissioned in 1952 to safely store radioactive cladding – pieces of metal tubes used for uranium fuel rods in some of the UK’s earliest nuclear reactors. Not everything at Sellafield is so seemingly clean and simple. Waste from many of those sites is being moved to Sellafield for treatment and storage. This is Thorp, Sellafield’s Thermal Oxide Reprocessing Plant. Safely disposing of nuclear waste is an expensive business. Earlier this year WIRED was given rare access to Sellafield, a sprawling collection of buildings dating back to the first atom-splitting flash of the nuclear age. Nuclear power stations have been built in 31 countries, but only six have either started building or completed construction of geological disposal facilities. The Windscale gas-cooled reactor took nine years to decommission. WIRED was not given access to these facilities, but Sellafield asserts they are constantly monitored and in a better condition than previously. To put that into perspective, between five and 10 kilograms of plutonium is enough to make a nuclear weapon. In March 2015 work began to pump 1,500 cubic metres of radioactive sludge from the First Generation Magnox Storage Pond, enough to fill seven double-decker buses. 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 UK’s vitrified waste. The government continues to seek volunteers for what would be one of the most challenging engineering projects ever undertaken in the UK. The WIRED conversation illuminates how technology is changing every aspect of our lives—from culture to business, science to design. It also reprocesses spent fuel from nuclear power plants overseas, mainly in Europe and Japan – 50,000 tonnes of fuel has been reprocessed on the site to date. There’s currently enough high and intermediate level radioactive waste to fill 27 Olympic-sized swimming pools. Sellafield monitors nuclear waste with NPL technique 18th May 2021 12:02 am 17th May 2021 12:30 pm The National Physical Laboratory (NPL) has deployed its High Accuracy Inspection System (HAIS) to the Sellafield nuclear site in Cumbria. It is here that spent fuel from the UK and overseas nuclear power plants is reprocessed and prepared for storage. Critics have accused the nuclear industry of “mismanagement”, and reiterated calls for Hunterston’s two reactors to stay shut. “This stopped operating before I was born and back then there was a Cold War mentality,” he says. “The programme painted a negative picture of safety that we do not recognise,” the statement continued. Registered Office: Mark Allen Group, St Jude's Church, Dulwich Road, London, SE24 0PB It then uses digital image correlation to analyse previous image sets and quantifies changes over time including corrosion, movement, vibration and dirt or water ingress. In Lab 188c engineers are using a combination of demolition robots and robot arms to safely demolish and store contaminated equipment. Sellafield is a large multi-function nuclear site close to Seascale on the coast of Cumbria, England. Flasks ranging in size from 50 tonnes to 110 tonnes, some measuring three metres high, arrive at Thorp by freight train and are lifted out remotely by a 150-tonne crane. "Typical nuclear, we over-engineer everything,” Edmondson says, taking out a dosimeter and sliding it nonchalantly along the face of one box. Our Sellafield, Decommissioning, Fuel and Waste (SDFW) team is responsible for the regulation of 20 nuclear licensed sites including Sellafield, all GB decommissioning sites, fuel cycle facilities, waste management facilities and nuclear research sites. Once in the facility, the lid bolts on the flasks are removed and the fuel is lowered into a small pool of water and taken out of the flask. The outside of the container is decontaminated before it is moved to Sellafield’s huge vitrified product store, an air-cooled facility currently home to 6,000 containers. How radioactive waste ended up spending decades in open-air ponds is a story typical of Sellafield’s troubled past. Instead of bumbling, British, gung ho pioneers, Sellafield is now run by corporate PR folk and slick American businessmen. Areas of concern can be highlighted and monitored, enabling small changes such as signs of unexpected degradation to be detected sooner than by using traditional manual inspection techniques. Responding to the accusations, Sellafield said there was “no question” it was safe. The clean-up operation is arduous – the Magnox pond isn’t expected to be decommissioned until 2054. The site currently handles nearly all the radioactive waste generated by the UK’s 15 operational nuclear reactors. Both buildings, for the most part, remain standing to this day. As well as being filled with waste during the early years of the nuclear age, Sellafield’s ponds were also overwhelmed with spent fuel during the 1974 miners’ strike. Walk inside and your voice echoes, bouncing off a two-storey tall steel door that blocks entry to the core. Thorp’s legacy will be the highly radioactive sludge it leaves behind: the final three per cent of waste it can’t reprocess. What was once a point of pride and scientific progress is a paranoid, locked-down facility. nuclear waste legacy storage ponds at the Sellafield nuclear reprocessing site in Cumbria, UK. 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. Sellafield is an important part of the NDA group, working collaboratively with others in the group to deliver our part of the NDA mission. Commissioned in 1952, waste was still being dumped into the 20 metre-long pond as recently as 1992. 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. Using HAIS, regular inspections can be carried out up to 16m deep into low-level waste stores. Train tracks criss-cross the ground as we pass Calder Hall and park up next to a featureless red and black building. The Sellafield is operated by a subsidiary of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA), the government body responsible for decommissioning the UK’s nuclear power sites. Leaked images of the ponds from 2014 show them in an alarming state of disrepair, riddled with cracks and rust. AWE Management’s plan for their holdings of nuclear waste was developed during 2012 and 2013 as a ‘do minimum’ option to compare against other proposed courses of action. The HAIS technique was developed by NPL using digital image correlation technology, an imaging technique well suited for monitoring integrity and conditions of materials. The waste is stored at the UK’s Sellafield nuclear reprocessing site, which holds radioactive waste dating back to the dawn of the nuclear age. Once sufficiently cooled, the spent fuel is moved by canal to Sellafield’s Head End Shear Cave where it is chopped up, dropped into a basket and dissolved in nitric acid. Through this open application, Sellafield Ltd and Digital Catapult are looking for businesses engaged in distributed ledger technology (DLT) to design, build and trial a solution over a 12 month commercially funded period, in response to the nuclear industry’s waste data management challenge The dissolved fuel, known as liquor, comprises 96 per cent uranium, one per cent plutonium and three per cent high-level waste containing every element in the periodic table. Each month, we’ll bring you hundreds of the latest roles from across the industry. It is the essential source of information and ideas that make sense of a world in constant transformation. 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. Depleted uranium catalyst could cut nuclear waste, UK to tackle nuclear waste with robots and AI. Cumbria has long been suggested as a potential site for the UK’s first, long-term underground nuclear waste storage facility - a process known as geological disposal. They are both now investigating where the waste came from, as is Sepa. 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. Though the inside is highly radioactive, the shielding means you can walk right up to the boxes. To revisit this article, visit My Profile, thenView saved stories. “Often we're fumbling in the dark to find out what's in there,” he says. One retired worker, who now lives in nearby Seascale, thought there might be a dropped fuel rod in one of the glove boxes – a rumour that turned out to be false. Demonstration removal of waste is scheduled for later this year, with larger scale removal operations set to start in 2020. Visit the UK’s dedicated jobsite for engineering professionals. Some plastic drums are crushed into smaller “pucks”, placed into bigger drums and filled with grout. As of 2014 the First Generation Magnox Storage Pond contained 1,200 cubic metres of radioactive sludge. The facility has an 8,000 container capacity. The building is so dangerous that it has been fitted with an alarm that sounds constantly to let everyone know they are safe. The highly radioactive fuel is then transferred next door into an even bigger pool where it’s stored and cooled for between three and five years. As we clean up the site, much is still unknown. Sellafield is so big it has its own bus service. 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. This giant storage pool is the size of two football fields, eight metres deep and kept at a constant 20°C. WIRED is where tomorrow is realised. Sellafield currently costs the UK taxpayer £1.9 billion a year to run. A B&Q humidity meter sits on the wall of the near-dark warehouse, installed when the boxes were first moved here to check if humidity would be an issue for storage. “At NPL we are interested in developing techniques to make measurements less subjective and to minimise human variability,” said Dr Nick McCormick, NPL principal research scientist. Installation has been completed of the equipment needed to remove material from the Pile Fuel Cladding Silo at the Sellafield site in the UK. In some cases, the process of decommissioning and storing nuclear waste is counterintuitively simple, if laborious. Sellafield, Decommissioning, Fuel and Waste. An operator uses the arm to sort and pack contaminated materials into 500-litre plastic drums, a form of interim storage. Dorothy Anne Gradden OBE (born 1962) is a British Nuclear Engineer for Sellafield Ltd.She leads the projects to decommission the large "legacy" ponds. Click here for our guidelines. - The nuclear waste continues to arrive at Sellafield by the week -Enough is Enough We will be outside the Kingmoor depot, Carlisle on Saturday 20th July handing out leaflets and showing our opposition to this deadly cargo … Reducing the hazard and risk on the Sellafield site quickly and safely is both a national priority and ONR's number one regulatory priority, as set out in our Annual Plan 2015/16. BACKGROUND One of the major challenges facing Sellafield Ltd is the safe decommissioning of the First Generation Magnox Storage Pond (FGMSP), a nuclear fuel storage facility that was originally built in the 1950s and 1960s It’s a warm August afternoon and I’m standing on a grassy scrap of land squinting at the most dangerous industrial building in western Europe. Sellafield nuclear waste site to close due to coronavirus, Magnox reprocessing plant will begin controlled shutdown after 8% of staff self-isolate,Guardian Jillian Ambrose Energy correspondentThu 19 Mar 2020 Britain’s nuclear waste site will shut its reprocessing plant at Sellafield after more than 8% of its staff began self-isolating to prevent the spread of the … In January 2012 Cumbria County Council rejected an application to carry out detailed geological surveys in boroughs near Sellafield. Sellafield described the waste as a “mis-consignment”, while Hunterston’s operator, EDF Energy, said it was a “non-compliance”. 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. This is a huge but cramped place: 13,000 people work in a 6 sq km pen surrounded by razor wire. A pioneer for the U.K.’s nuclear industry, Sellafield supported national defense, generated electricity for nearly half a century and developed the ability to safely manage nuclear waste – delivering great benefit, while also creating a complex nuclear cleanup challenge for which there aren’t any blueprints. A later report found a design error caused the leak, which was allowed to continue undetected due to a complacent culture at the facility. Constructed in 1962 and shuttered in 1981, the ‘golf ball’ wasn’t built with decommissioning in mind. For Sellafield, the politics are almost as complex as the clean-up operation. Among its labyrinth of scruffy, dilapidated rooms are dozens of glove boxes used to cut up fuel rods. The National Physical Laboratory (NPL) has deployed its High Accuracy Inspection System (HAIS) to the Sellafield nuclear site in Cumbria. As of August 2020 , activities at the site include nuclear fuel reprocessing, nuclear waste storage and nuclear decommissioning, and it is a former nuclear power generating site. This burial plan is the government’s agreed solution but public and political opposition, combined with difficulties in finding a site, have seen proposals stall. For official figures and essential information about how the data has been produced, always refer to the UKRWI 2019 published reports. Much of the facility is now being decommissioned. One of of the site’s oldest buildings, constructed in the 1950s, carried out analytical chemistry and sampling of nuclear material. Sellafield, the largest nuclear site in Western Europe, reprocesses spent nuclear fuel, splitting it into plutonium, uranium and waste. … The plan involves sending 5,000 205 litre drums of Intermediate Level Waste (ILW) by road and rail to the Waste Treatment Centre at Sellafield, Cumbria. The expertise, experience and current knowledge of our team and that of our supply chain, combined with emerging technologies and new learning, will cement our reputation as global experts in the safe and secure Sellafield says vitrification ensures safe medium-to-long-term storage, but even glass degrades over time. If the alarm falls silent, it means the criticality alarm has stopped working. In 1956 this stretch of Cumbrian coast witnessed Queen Elizabeth II opening Calder Hall, the world’s first commercial nuclear power station. HAIS deploys a camera vertically into an inspection port and takes a series of images of the waste storage at pre-determined points. It is one of several hugely necessary, and hugely complex, clean-up jobs that must be undertaken at Sellafield. Pipes run in every direction and a lattice of scaffolding blocks out the sky. The leak was eventually contained and the liquid returned to primary storage. It wasn’t. In other areas of Sellafield, the levels of radiation are so extreme that no humans can ever enter. "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. There are no nuclear power plants in operation at the Sellafield site. It might not have a home yet, but the country’s 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. There are more than 1,000 nuclear facilities. The business case was developed through a process of engagement with numerous NDA Delivery partners which included Sellafield Ltd. Sellafield Ltd is the company responsible for safely delivering decommissioning, reprocessing, nuclear waste management and fuel manufacturing activities. Last night's BBC Panorama programme did a good job at lifting the lid on Britain's ongoing nuclear disaster that is Sellafield, writes Ian Fairlie. “That one there, that’s the second most dangerous,” says Andrew Cooney, technical manager at Sellafield, nodding in the direction of another innocuous-looking site on the vast complex. In one image a seagull can be seen bobbing on the water. Inspection of the waste stores is vital for safe storage, but the process is time-consuming. It is already there and despite claims by BNFL that its … An anonymous whistleblower who used to be a senior manager at Sellafield told the broadcaster’s Panorama programme that he worried about the safety of the site “every day”. The remaining waste is mixed with glass and heated to 1,200°C. But it failed to expose the full scandal of the UK's 'reprocessing' of spent fuel into 140 tonnes of plutonium, enough to build 20,000 nuclear bombs - while leaving £100s of billions of maintenance and cleanup costs to … In 2002 work began to make the site safe. A drive around the perimeter takes 40 minutes. The lab operated in the 1970s and produced the Plutonium-238 used in early cardiac pacemakers and as a primary fuel source for Nasa’s deep space missions where solar energy isn’t available. A dose of between 4.5 and six is considered deadly. For example, measuring the properties of materials in-situ allows for a better understanding of how much heat is being generated by the material and what the storage system needs to tolerate it. Once the room is cleared, humans can go in. Sellafield is the largest nuclear site in Europe and the most complicated nuclear site in the world. Those officers will soon be trained at a new £39 million firearms base at Sellafield. 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. Second: Sellafield has turned the Irish Sea and its seabed into a nuclear dump. 11569365, Study calls for new air quality regulations in buildings, Upbeat Barometer points to growth for SME manufacturers, Opinion: Lessons learnt from the semiconductor shortage, NUS team harvests WiFi signals to power electronics, Smart bandage designed to detect infection, CETEC project to commercialise recycled wind turbine materials. The UK government’s dilemma is by no means unique. The towers of blocks are spaced to allow you to walk between them, but reach the end and you’re in total darkness. This is Sellafield’s great quandary. Encapsulated waste products have been stored at the Sellafield site for years, and the range of waste products is expected to increase over the next decade as the site evolves. Standing in a tiny control room crammed with screens and a control desk, Davey points to a grainy video feed on a CRT monitor. Sellafield site ranks as one of Europe's largest industrial complexes, managing more radioactive waste in one place than any other nuclear facility in the world. Threaded commenting powered by interconnect/it code. This tick-tock noise, emitted by Tannoys dotted throughout the facility, is the equivalent of an 'everything's okay' alarm. This process, according to Davey, is about “separating fact and fiction” before work can begin. Sellafield is the largest nuclear site in Europe and the most complicated nuclear site in the world. Working 10-hour days, four days a week in air-fed suits, staff are tasked with cleaning every speck of dust and dirt until the room has been fully decontaminated. The solution, for now, is vitrification. Seagulls chatter, the hum of machinery is constant, a pipe zig-zagging across the ground vents steam. Sellafield is located across the Irish Sea on the Cumbrian coast and is approximately 170 km (112 miles) from the north east coast of Ireland. Regardless of who runs it, Sellafield could remain one of Europe’s most toxic sites for millennia. Every day 10,000 litres of demineralised water is pumped in to keep the pool clean. Once cooled, it forms a solid block of glass. The site’s reprocessing contracts are due to expire in four years but clean-up may take more than 100 years and cost up to £162 billion. Dilapidated nuclear waste storage ponds abandoned 40 years ago containing hundreds of tonnes of fuel rods pose an immediate danger to public safety, photographs sent to The Ecologist reveal. Registered in England No. Deploying HAIS to monitor waste stores can lead to a greater understanding of the evolution of nuclear materials and how it impacts on long-term safe storage, NPL said. Sellafield is protected by its own police force, the Civil Nuclear Constabulary (CNC), and its own fire service. The huge risk of contamination means human exposure can’t be risked. Each two-metre square box weighs up to 50 tonnes and contains around 100 sieverts of radiation. nuclear waste management Sellafield is the most complex nuclear site in the world. Sellafield’s 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 site’s ageing infrastructure. And even then our processes are designed to convert it into a solid stable form. Thorp was closed for two years as a result of the leak, costing tens of millions of pounds in lost revenue. 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. But working out exactly what is in each laboratory has proven complicated. By increasing the predictability of the environment and helping to infer waste behaviour in existing waste stores, the system can provide information for influencing new store design and improvement of existing store conditions. "It's all about the politics," Davey argues. All comments are moderated. These are nationally important projects as part of country's nuclear clean up operation on "Britain’s biggest and most hazardous nuclear waste site". "Nobody yet has come up with a different suggestion other than sticking it in the ground,” Davey tells me, half-jokingly. But the boxes, for now, are safe. "This is a 60-year-old building, records are non-existent,” says Rich Davey, a mechanical responsible engineer at Sellafield. An automated dismantling machine, remote-controlled manipulator arm and crane were used to take it apart piece by piece, leaving only the concrete biological shield and iconic, aluminium-clad shell. The leak caused 83 cubic metres of nitric acid solution to seep from a broken pipe into a secondary containment chamber - a stainless steel tub encased in two-metre-thick reinforced concrete with a capacity of 250 cubic metres. 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. Some buildings are so dangerous that their collapse could be catastrophic, but the funding, expertise or equipment needed to bring them down safely isn’t immediately available. 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. Information about spent fuel and nuclear materials is presented separately in the relevant 2019 Inventory report. The reality is that a small percentage of the nuclear waste generated at Sellafield is liquid. The facility, which opened in 1994, is due to close permanently in 2018. Sellafield Ltd is responsible on behalf of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority for cleaning-up the country’s highest nuclear risks and hazards to safeguarding nuclear fuel, materials and waste. Conditions inside the Shear Cave are intense: all operations are carried out remotely using robots, with the waste producing 280 sieverts of radiation per hour - more than 60 times the deadly dose. … Material housed here will remain radioactive for 100,000 years. Sellafield is the largest nuclear site in Europe and, with over 1000 nuclear … The fuel and sludge in the ponds could spontaneously ignite if exposed to air, spreading intense radiation over a wide area. This, he explains, is all part of the robot-led decommissioning process.