Nuclear past, present and future

The Sellafield site employs over 10,000 people

West Cumbria saw the arrival of the nuclear industry during the 1940s.

The Calder Hall plant was originally built to supply plutonium to the British nuclear weapons programme.

The area hit the headlines in 1957 when a fire in one of the chimneys released radioactive particles into the atmosphere.

Renamed Sellafield, the complex is in the headlines once more as the possible location for a new nuclear power plant.

If you speak to anyone in West Cumbria you will soon learn how important the nuclear industry is to the local economy and welfare of the area.

Thousands of jobs are tied in to the hi-tech businesses that work directly and indirectly with the Sellafield complex.

The Sellafield site covers an area of around four square kilometres.

Nuclear first

NUCLEAR FACTS Nuclear waste gives off three types of radiation: Alpha, beta and gamma 1kg of uranium provides enough energy to boil around two million kettles of water Waste from reprocessing is categorised as high, intermediate or low-level, according to the amount of radiation they emit

Calder Hall was built to provide plutonium for the British nuclear bomb programme. A by-product was electricity, which was fed into the national electricity grid.

Two power plants were constructed on the site. They were Calder A and Calder B.

Historic Windscale photographs

The Queen officially opened the power station in 1956. It was the first commercial nuclear power station in the world.

Contamination

October 1957 saw the Calder Hall power station in the headlines as a fire raged in Pile 1 releasing radioactive particles into the atmosphere.

Outwardly nothing seemed wrong however, over the next few weeks the full extent of the accident became apparent.

Images from the fire at Windscale

The Calder Hall plant closed in 2003 and is in the process of being decommissioned. A milestone in this project was the demolition of four massive cooling towers during 2007.

Demolition of the cooling towers

Decommissioning

Suiting up for nuclear demolition

Behind the barbed wire and armed police guard a number of companies now have their operations based within the Sellafield nuclear site.

Decommissioning and reprocessing of nuclear waste has become a long term business.

Nuclear Fuel has a life span of about five years inside a reactor.

Once used the fuel needs to be reprocessed. This is the process where uranium, plutonium and waste are separated from each other.

There are two nuclear reprocessing plants in west Cumbria. One deals with magnox fuel from Britain's early nuclear power plants. The other plant is called Thorp, the Thermal Oxide Reprocessing Plant.

Fuel has been reprocessed at the Sellafield site for over 50 years.

Nuclear Decommissioning at Sellafield

Future

Reprocessing and nuclear site decommissioning will keep the Sellafield site in business for many years, but it may also be in line for a new power station.

Two power stations planned

Three sites have been identified as possible locations for a new nuclear power plant. Kirksanton in South West Cumbria and a site near Egremont are both contenders, as is the Sellafield site.

Plans for nuclear sites revealed

By 2020 the UK's demand for electricity is projected to have grown to 381 billion kiloWatt hours.

Solving the UK's generation issue

Whatever the outcome of the power generation debate it is clear that the Sellafield complex will play a key part in supplying expertise and resources for many years to come, in what has become a global demand for nuclear technology.