what happens if sellafield blows up
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Sellafield Ltd said it was "not a radiological event" but involved a small number of canisters of solvents which had been on the site since 1992. Constructed in 1962 and shuttered in 1981, the golf ball wasnt built with decommissioning in mind. Sweden has already selected its spot, Switzerland and France are trying to finalise theirs. I kept being told, at Sellafield, that science is still trying to rectify the decisions made in undue haste three-quarters of a century ago. But then the pieces were left in the cell. Britain's post war dreams of being a world leader in nuclear energy lie in radioactive ruins in Sellafield. However, there were concerns they could become hazardous if exposed to oxygen. Everybodys thinking: What do we do? 45,907. Biologists are working to quickly grow hardier specimens that can be propagated and transplanted by robotic arms. 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. What looked like a smart line of business back in the 1950s has now turned out to be anything but. Wealthy nations suddenly found themselves worrying about winter blackouts. This cycle, from acid to powder, lasted up to 36 hours, Dixon said and it hadnt improved a jot in efficiency in the years shed been there. But the following morning, when I met her, she felt sombre, she admitted. On one of my afternoons in Sellafield, I was shown around a half-made building: a 1bn factory that would pack all the purified plutonium into canisters to be sent to a GDF. If new nuclear does go ahead in the UK then the technology will be French, Japanese or American. Even so, it will take until 2050 to empty all the silos. Video, At the crash site of 'no hope' - BBC reporter in Greece, Record numbers of guide dog volunteers after BBC story. 1. Once in action, the snake took mere minutes to cut up the vat. It took two years and 5m to develop this instrument. This year, though, governments felt the pressure to redo their sums when sanctions on Russia abruptly choked off supplies of oil and gas. A loss of fluid is the more common cause of failure and this happens through a slow leak or a sudden one when an old hose breaks or the radiator develops a leak. To take apart an ageing nuclear facility, you have to put a lot of other things together first. These have to be secure and robust but they cant be irretrievably secure and robust, because scientists may yet develop better ways to deal with waste. If Al Queda decide to hit hit sellafield with anything bigger than a Lear jet, it would most likely spell the end of the eastern seaboard of ireland being anything approaching inhabitable for a very long time. In a plan to respond to this situation, the key element will be skill in determining from weather data and data from the affected plant: how long the cloud will take to reach Ireland; how severe will radiation levels be when the cloud arrives; what places will be affected and for how long. Any pathogens within the phlegm will be easily neutralised by . Many of us put our phones and laptop charging during the night. Once radiation arrives, the national network of radiation monitoring stations, supplemented by mobile monitoring units of the Defence Forces and Civil Defence, will enable movement of the radiation cloud to be tracked and radiation levels in each area to be quantified. Once sufficiently cooled, the spent fuel is moved by canal to Sellafields Head End Shear Cave where it is chopped up, dropped into a basket and dissolved in nitric acid. Sellafield said in a statement: "These chemicals are used extensively in many industries and are well understood. The short-termism of policymaking neglected any plans that had to be made for the abominably lengthy, costly life of radioactive waste. 1. Sellafield Ltd's head of corporate communications, Emma Law, takes you inside Sellafield. Responding to the accusations, Sellafield said there was no question it was safe. Effective restrictions on supply of such milk or other affected foods would have to be put in place. THE Irish population is "a sitting duck" in the event of a nuclear accident at Sellafield, Green Party deputy leader, Mary White warned yesterday. 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. In either case, a large volume of radioactive substances could rise into the atmosphere propelled by an explosion, a fire or both. Thorp was closed for two years as a result of the leak, costing tens of millions of pounds in lost revenue. When records couldnt be found, Sellafield staff conducted interviews with former employees. 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. Theyre all being decommissioned now, or awaiting demolition. Pipes run in every direction and a lattice of scaffolding blocks out the sky. An earlier version said the number of cancer deaths caused by the Windscale fire had been revised upwards to 240 over time. The skips have held radioactive material for so long that they themselves count as waste. An operator sits inside the machine, reaching long, mechanical arms into the silo to fish out waste. The flasks were cast from single ingots of stainless steel, their walls a third of a metre thick. The countryside around is quiet, the roads deserted. When I visited in October, the birches on Olkiluoto had turned to a hot blush. 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. 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. 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. All of Sellafield is in a holding pattern, trying to keep waste safe until it can be consigned to the ultimate strongroom: the geological disposal facility (GDF), bored hundreds of metres into the Earths rock, a project that could cost another 53bn. Most of the plants at Sellafield, for instance, because of their nature, do not contain radioactive iodine and iodine tablets would, therefore, have no place in the response to a disaster involving these plants. Follow the Long Read on Twitter at @gdnlongread, listen to our podcasts here and sign up to the long read weekly email here. Theres currently enough high and intermediate level radioactive waste to fill 27 Olympic-sized swimming pools. Rebel skirmishes, global politics, and a caustic atmosphere are just some of the obstacles in Christopher Horsleys mission to capture life-saving visuals. The reprocessing plants end was always coming. Question 4 is what I consider the 'ultimate goal + worst-case scenario' an artist could think of. In a reactor, hundreds of rods of fresh uranium fuel slide into a pile of graphite blocks. 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. For most of the latter half of the 20th century, one of Sellafields chief tasks was reprocessing. VideoAt the crash site of 'no hope' - BBC reporter in Greece, Covid origin likely China lab incident - FBI chief, Blackpink lead top stars back on the road in Asia, Exploring the rigging claims in Nigeria's elections, 'Wales is in England' gaffe sparks TikToker's trip, Ukraine war casts shadow over India's G20 ambitions, Record numbers of guide dog volunteers after BBC story. Planning for the disposal of high-level waste has to take into account the drift of continents and the next ice age. The rods went in late in the evening, after hours of technical hitches, so the moment itself was anticlimactic. She meets aunts and cousins on her shifts all the time. Taking the pessimistic view, that such a release of radioactivity could occur, this article attempts to make a realistic assessment of the damage Ireland might suffer in such an event. Workers at Sellafield, reporting their alarming radiation exposure to their managers, were persuaded that theyd walk [it] off on the way home, the Daily Mirror reported at the time. The solution, for now, is vitrification. Then it is vitrified: mixed with three parts glass beads and a little sugar, until it turns into a hot block of dirty-brown glass. In 2002 work began to make the site safe. Leaked images of the ponds from 2014 show them in an alarming state of disrepair, riddled with cracks and rust. On April 20, 2005 Sellafield workers found a huge leak at Thorp, which first started in July 2004. The government had to buy up milk from farmers living in 500 sq km around Sellafield and dump it in the Irish Sea. About 9bn years ago, tens of thousands of giant stars ran out of fuel, collapsed upon themselves, and then exploded. In Sellafield, these nuclear divers will put on radiation-proof wetsuits and tidy up the pond floor, reaching the places where robotic arms cannot go. 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. Cassidys pond, which holds 14,000 cubic metres of water, resembles an extra-giant, extra-filthy lido planted in the middle of an industrial park. Some of these structures are growing, in the industrys parlance, intolerable, atrophied by the sea air, radiation and time itself. The very day before I visited Sellafield, in mid-July, the reprocessing came to an end as well. Hence the GDF: a terrestrial cavity to hold waste until its dangers have dried up and it becomes as benign as the surrounding rock. The year before the pandemic, a sump tank attached to a waste pond sprang a leak and had to be grouted shut. The snake hasnt been deployed since 2015, because other, more urgent tasks lie at hand. Questions 1, 2 and 3 are probably in my top 10 of most frequently asked questions. It turned out that if you werent looking to make plutonium nukes to blow up cities, Magnox was a pretty inefficient way to light up homes and power factories. Terrorists could try to get at the nuclear material. 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? 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. Fill a water bottle one-third full of vinegar. New technologies, for instance, and new buildings to replace the intolerable ones, and new reserves of money. 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. With testing banned, countries have to rely on good maintenance and simulations to trust their weapons work. BT running the comms at Sellafield is infinitely more scary. It is here that spent fuel from the UK and overseas nuclear power plants is reprocessed and prepared for storage. The document ran to 17,000 pages. Here is the deal. Which was just as well, because Id gone to Sellafield not to observe how it lived but to understand how it is preparing for its end. Spent fuel rods and radioactive pieces of metal rest in skips, which in turn are submerged in open, rectangular ponds, where water cools them and absorbs their radiation. Nuclear power stations have been built in 31 countries, but only six have either started building or completed construction of geological disposal facilities. But even that will be only a provisional arrangement, lasting a few decades. Last year, BBC's Panorama exposed safety concerns at the plant after a tip-off from a whistleblower, including allegations of inadequate staffing levels and poor maintenance. One moment youre passing cows drowsing in pastures, with the sea winking just beyond. It was perfectly safe, my guide assured me. A government study concluded that radiation from Sellafield wasnt to blame. An area of the site was cordoned off for most of the day, and the canisters disposed of by controlled explosion. Waste can travel incognito, to fatal effect: radioactive atoms carried by the wind or water, entering living bodies, riddling them with cancer, ruining them inside out. Flasks of nuclear waste in the vitrified product store at Sellafield in 2003. But. 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. Then, having. All radioactivity is a search for stability. The salvaged waste will then be transferred to more secure buildings that will be erected on site. Most of the atoms in our daily lives the carbon in the wood of a desk, the oxygen in the air, the silicon in window glass have stable nuclei. At its heart is a giant pond full of radioactive . Dixons team was running out of spare parts that arent manufactured any more. Around the same time, a documentary crew found higher incidences than expected of leukaemia among children in some surrounding areas. Barrels containing high-level radioactive nuclear waste stored in a pool at Sellafield, in 2002. ike malign glitter, radioactivity gets everywhere, turning much of what it touches into nuclear waste. In a van, we went down a steep, dark ramp for a quarter of an hour until we reached Onkalos lowest level, and here I caught the acrid odour of a closed space in which heavy machinery has run for a long time. 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. Yellow circles denote full flasks, black are empty. The hot, compressed oxygen explodes in a runaway . Advertisement. Other countries also plan to banish their nuclear waste into GDFs. 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. ", Updated 19/09/16, 16:00 - References to certain building names have been removed at the request of Sellafield, 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. At Sellafield, the rods were first cooled in ponds of water for between 90 and 250 days. Thirty-four workers were contaminated, and the building was promptly closed down. As the nation's priorities shifted,. From that liquor, technicians separated out uranium and plutonium, powdery like cumin. With every passing year, maintaining the worlds costliest rubbish dump becomes more and more commercially calamitous. 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 leaked liquid was estimated to contain 20 metric tons of uranium and 160kg of plutonium. On the other hand, high-level waste the byproduct of reprocessing is so radioactive that its containers will give off heat for thousands of years. Have you ever wondered what happens behind Sellafield's security fences? Two floors above, a young Sellafield employee sat in a gaming chair, working at a laptop with a joystick. And so they must be maintained and kept standing. (The cause was human error: someone had added a wheat-based cat litter into the drum instead of bentonite.) As of 2014 the First Generation Magnox Storage Pond contained 1,200 cubic metres of radioactive sludge. NORAD shits its collective pants 3. Discarded cladding, peeled off fuel rods like banana-skins, fills a cluster of 16-metre-deep concrete silos partially sunk into the earth. 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. Even this elaborate vitrification is insufficient in the long, long, long run. These atoms decay, throwing off particles and energy over years or millennia until they become lighter and more stable. The day before I met Dixon, technicians had fed one final batch of spent fuel into acid and that was that, the end of reprocessing. The towers of blocks are spaced to allow you to walk between them, but reach the end and youre in total darkness. 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. Skip No 9738 went into the map, one more hard-won addition to Sellafields knowledge of itself. 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 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. First, would the effects of a terrorist attack be worse than an accident? In some spots, the air shakes with the noise of machinery. In Taryl's final installment of 2020's Halloween how-to series, we bring you "The Glob". The UKs earliest reactors a type called Magnox were set up to harvest plutonium for bombs; the electricity was a happy byproduct. About 9,000 people are employed at the Sellafield site The estimated cost of cleaning up the Sellafield nuclear reprocessing site in Cumbria has risen by almost 2.5bn in a year, a report has. A government inquiry was then held, but its report was not released in full until 1988. The radiation trackers clipped to our protective overalls let off soft cheeps, their frequency varying as radioactivity levels changed around us. "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. During this process, some of the uranium atoms, randomly but very usefully, absorb darting neutrons, yielding heavier atoms of plutonium: the stuff of nuclear weapons. 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. Accidents had to be modelled. 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 an easterly wind, the cloud of radioactive material would reach the east coast of Ireland in a number of hours, depending on the speed of the wind. "That should help us remove more of the radioactivity early on, so that we can get on with the . We power-walked past nonetheless. The air was pure Baltic brine. Standing in the oldest part of the Sellafield site, the Magnox Swarf Storage Silo has stored nuclear waste in its water-filled chambers for the last 60 years. 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