Country United Kingdom Commission date 1956 Opened 1956 | Operator(s) Sellafield Ltd Primary fuel Nuclear | |
Similar Calder Hall Power Station, La Hague site, Low Level Waste Repository, Advanced gas‑cooled reactor, Sizewell nuclear power sta | ||
Nuclear sites sellafields nuclear clean up site first hand onsite interview about the clean up
Sellafield is a nuclear fuel reprocessing and nuclear decommissioning site, close to the village of Seascale on the coast of the Irish Sea in Cumbria, England. The site is served by Sellafield railway station. Sellafield incorporates the original nuclear reactor site at Windscale, which is currently undergoing decommissioning and dismantling, and Calder Hall, a neighbour of Windscale, which is also undergoing decommissioning and dismantling of its four nuclear power generating reactors. It is the site of the world's first commercial nuclear power station to generate electricity on an industrial scale.
Contents
- Nuclear sites sellafields nuclear clean up site first hand onsite interview about the clean up
- Map of Sellafield Seascale UK
- Ownership and facilities
- History
- Finances
- Windscale Piles
- First Generation Reprocessing Plant
- Magnox Reprocessing Plant
- First Generation Magnox Storage Pond FGMSP
- Calder Hall nuclear power station
- Cooling towers
- Windscale Advanced Gas Cooled Reactor WAGR
- Thermal Oxide Reprocessing Plant
- 2005 Thorp plant leak
- Highly Active Liquor Evaporation and Storage
- Waste Vitrification Plant
- Sellafield MOX Plant
- Enhanced Actinide Removal Plant
- Radioactive waste stores
- Fellside Power Station
- Sellafield and the local community
- Central Laboratory National Nuclear Laboratory headquarters
- Sellafield Centre Business and Information Centre
- Radiological releases
- First Generation Magnox Storage Pond
- Organ removal inquiry
- Health studies on Cumbria and Seascale
- Irish objections
- Manx objections
- Norwegian objections
- MOX fuel quality data falsification
- Plutonium records discrepancy
- Decommissioning
- Music
- Other
- References
Map of Sellafield, Seascale, UK
Ownership and facilities
Sellafield was previously owned and operated by the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) and then, following the division of UKAEA in 1971, it was British Nuclear Fuels Ltd. Since 1 April 2005, it has been owned by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) and is now operated by Sellafield Ltd.
In 2008, the NDA awarded Nuclear Management Partners (NMP) the position of Parent Body Organisation of Sellafield Ltd. under their standard management model for NDA sites. This consortium, composed of US company URS, British company AMEC, and AREVA of France, was initially awarded a contract for five years, with extension options to 17 years.
On 13 January 2015, the NDA announced that NMP would lose the management contract for Sellafield Ltd. as the "complexity and technical uncertainties presented significantly greater challenges than other NDA sites", and the site was therefore "less well suited" to the NDA's existing standard management model. The new structure, which came into effect on 1 April 2016, saw Sellafield Ltd. become a subsidiary of the NDA.
Activities at the Sellafield site primarily support decommissioning of historic plants, and reprocessing fuel from UK and international nuclear reactors. Decommissioning projects include the Windscale Piles, Calder Hall, historic reprocessing facilities, waste stores, as well as other clean-up projects on the site. Reprocessing plants include the THORP nuclear fuel reprocessing plant, the Magnox nuclear fuel reprocessing plant, and the Waste Vitrification Plant. The site contains several nuclear waste stores, with the Low Level Waste Repository 6 km away at Drigg. The UK's