The disposal took place in two batches, with the first transferred from the laboratory to another location on the site and successfully and safely detonated at around 14:15 BST. Have you ever wondered what happens behind Sellafield's security fences? But making safe what is left behind is an almost unimaginably expensive and complex task that requires us to think not on a human timescale, but a planetary one. The UKs plans are at an earlier stage. This tick-tock noise, emitted by Tannoys dotted throughout the facility, is the equivalent of an 'everything's okay' alarm. DeSantis won't say he's running. Two Cumbrian enviromental protestors fined for blocking London road, Campaign launched for stroke and coronary care services at hospital, Grants fund learning and land management at Cumbrian farm, Starbucks to open in Ulverston this Friday, Learning hub opens in Ulverston for children with special needs, Belgian Beer Festival to take place in Kendal, Human error to blame for deadly train crash, says Greek PM, At the crash site of 'no hope' - BBC reporter in Greece. Have your child pours in enough baking soda to fill the balloon halfway. 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. "It's all about the politics," Davey argues. Gas, fuel rods and radioactive equipment were all left in place, in sealed rooms known as cells, which turned so lethal that humans havent entered them since. Where the waste goes next is controversial. The plant had to be shut down for two years; the cleanup cost at least 300m. The ceiling for now is 53bn. It marked Sellafields transition from an operational facility to a depot devoted purely to storage and containment. Some of these structures are growing, in the industrys parlance, intolerable, atrophied by the sea air, radiation and time itself. Nothing is produced at Sellafield anymore. Flasks of nuclear waste in the vitrified product store at Sellafield in 2003. Nuclear waste has no respect for human timespans. If you are on the receiving end of someone's blow-up, you want to not feed the fire by getting angry yourself, but instead remaining calm. We power-walked past nonetheless. Once in action, the snake took mere minutes to cut up the vat. This burial plan is the governments agreed solution but public and political opposition, combined with difficulties in finding a site, have seen proposals stall. In certain other circumstances, their availability could, of course, be very important. Fifteen years after the New Mexico site opened, a drum of waste burst open, leaking radiation up an exhaust shaft and then for a kilometre or so above ground. Theyre all being decommissioned now, or awaiting demolition. In some cases, the process of decommissioning and storing nuclear waste is counterintuitively simple, if laborious. Most of it was swarf the cladding skinned off fuel rods, broken into chunks three or four inches long. It took two years and 5m to develop this instrument. Nuclear fuel is radioactive, of course, but so is nuclear waste, and the only thing that can render such waste harmless is time. Around the same time, a documentary crew found higher incidences than expected of leukaemia among children in some surrounding areas. It, too, will become harmless over time, but the scale of that time is planetary, not human. The rods went in late in the evening, after hours of technical hitches, so the moment itself was anticlimactic. Feb 22, 2023. The government had to buy up milk from farmers living in 500 sq km around Sellafield and dump it in the Irish Sea. Hawara: 'What happened was horrific and barbaric'. They dont know exactly what theyll find in the silos and ponds. Go 'beyond the nutshell' at https://brilliant.org/nutshell by diving deeper into these topics and more with 20% off an annual subscription!This video was spo. 1. Below us, submerged in water, lay decades worth of intermediate-level waste not quite as radioactive as spent fuel rods, but more harmful than low-level paper towels. Environmental campaigners argue burying nuclear waste underground is a disaster waiting to happen. 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. It took two years and 5m to develop this instrument. Not everything at Sellafield is so seemingly clean and simple. The reprocessing plants end was always coming. It will cost 5.5bn and is designed to be safe for a million years. This year, though, governments felt the pressure to redo their sums when sanctions on Russia abruptly choked off supplies of oil and gas. The silos are rudimentary concrete bins, built for waste to be tipped in, but for no other kind of access. About 9bn years ago, tens of thousands of giant stars ran out of fuel, collapsed upon themselves, and then exploded. On the one hand, it calls for ingenious machines like the laser snake, conceived especially for Sellafield. A pipe on the outside of a building had cracked, and staff had planted 10ft-tall sheets of lead into the ground around it to shield people from the radiation. Since September 11th, public concern in Ireland about Sellafield has taken on the added dimension of fear of a terrorist attack on the plant. I leased a beat and the song blew up, but some other artist has the exclusive rights. 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. But the first consideration clearly has to be health. Weve got folks here who joined at 18 and have been here more than 40 years, working only in this building, said Lisa Dixon, an operations manager. Walk inside and your voice echoes, bouncing off a two-storey tall steel door that blocks entry to the core. At Sellafield, the rods were first cooled in ponds of water for between 90 and 250 days. Atomic weapons are highly complex, surprisingly sensitive, and often pretty old. In other areas of Sellafield, the levels of radiation are so extreme that no humans can ever enter. Radioactive contamination was released into the environment, which it is now estimated caused around 240 cancers in the long term, with 100 to 240 of these being fatal. The salvaged waste will then be transferred to more secure buildings that will be erected on site. The best way to neutralise its threat is to move it into a subterranean vault, of the kind the UK plans to build later this century. In 2002 work began to make the site safe. Since 1991, stainless steel containers full of vitrified waste, each as tall as a human, have been stacked 10-high in a warehouse. 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. This was where, in the early 1950s, the Windscale facility produced the Plutonium-239 that would be used in the UKs first nuclear bomb. 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. If Onkalo begins operating on schedule, in 2025, it will be the worlds first GDF for spent fuel and high-level reactor waste 6,500 tonnes of the stuff, all from Finnish nuclear stations. WIRED was not given access to these facilities, but Sellafield asserts they are constantly monitored and in a better condition than previously. The skips have held radioactive material for so long that they themselves count as waste. That one there, thats the second most dangerous, says Andrew Cooney, technical manager at Sellafield, nodding in the direction of another innocuous-looking site on the vast complex. However, using improper technique may cause problem. Once the room is cleared, humans can go in. Four decades on, not a single GDF has begun to operate anywhere in the world. Planning for the disposal of high-level waste has to take into account the drift of continents and the next ice age. If Philip K Dick designed your nightmares, the laser snake would haunt them. How will the rock bear up if, in the next ice age, tens of thousands of years from today, a kilometre or two of ice forms on the surface? Waste disposal is a completely solved problem, Edward Teller, the father of the hydrogen bomb, declared in 1979. In a reactor, hundreds of rods of fresh uranium fuel slide into a pile of graphite blocks. 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. Its a major project, Turner said, like the Chunnel or the Olympics.. An operator sits inside the machine, reaching long, mechanical arms into the silo to fish out waste. When I visited in October, the birches on Olkiluoto had turned to a hot blush. Now it needs to clean-up, No One Knows If Decades-Old Nukes Would Actually Work, Fat, Sugar, Salt Youve Been Thinking About Food All Wrong, 25 of the Best Amazon Prime Series Right Now, The Secret to Making Concrete That Lasts 1,000 Years. "It is urgent that we clean up these ponds [but] it will be decades before they are . It is in keeping this exposure for each individual to a minimum that simple practical precautions will be absolutely vital. At its heart is a giant pond full of radioactive . The Windscale fire of 10 October 1957 was the worst nuclear accident in the United Kingdom's history, and one of the worst in the world, ranked in severity at level 5 out of a possible 7 on the International Nuclear Event Scale. The room on the screens is littered with rubbish and smashed up bits of equipment. Thank you for calling the BT emergency radiation leak reporting centre. It is here that spent fuel from the UK and overseas nuclear power plants is reprocessed and prepared for storage. New technologies, for instance, and new buildings to replace the intolerable ones, and new reserves of money. This article was amended on 16 December 2022. Put a funnel in the neck of a balloon, and hold onto the balloon neck and funnel. Among its labyrinth of scruffy, dilapidated rooms are dozens of glove boxes used to cut up fuel rods. About 9bn years ago, tens of thousands of giant stars ran out of fuel, collapsed upon themselves, and then exploded. Weve walked a short distance from the 'golf ball' to a cavernous hangar used to store the waste. What's he waiting for? And here, over roughly 20m years, the uranium and other bits of space dust and debris cohered to form our planet in such a way that the violent tectonics of the young Earth pushed the uranium not towards its hot core but up into the folds of its crust. It all put me in mind of a man whod made a house of ice in deepest winter but now senses spring around the corner, and must move his furniture out before it all melts and collapses around him. Your call is important to us. 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. Video, Record numbers of guide dog volunteers after BBC story, BBC's Panorama exposed safety concerns at the plant, Prince Andrew offered Frogmore Cottage - reports, Beer and wine sales in Canada fall to all-time low, Bieber cancels remaining Justice world tour dates, Trump lashes out at Murdoch over vote fraud case, Man survives 31 days in jungle by eating worms, Eli Lilly caps monthly insulin costs in US at $35, Ed Sheeran says wife developed tumour in pregnancy, China and Belarus call for peace in Ukraine. "That should help us remove more of the radioactivity early on, so that we can get on with the . Responding to the accusations, Sellafield said there was no question it was safe. Sellafield has been called the most dangerous place in the UK, the most hazardous place in Europe and the world's riskiest nuclear waste site. I still get lost sometimes here, said Sanna Mustonen, a geologist with Posiva, even after all these years. After Onkalo takes in all its waste, these caverns will be sealed up to the surface with bentonite, a kind of clay that absorbs water, and that is often found in cat litter. Yellow circles denote full flasks, black are empty. Please stay on the line. At 100mph, a part of the locomotive exploded and the train derailed. I stood there for a while, transfixed by the sight of a building going up even as its demolition was already foretold, feeling the water-filled coolness of the fresh, metre-thick concrete walls, and trying to imagine the distant, dreamy future in which all of Sellafield would be returned to fields and meadows again. 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. Eventually there will be two more retrieval machines in the silos, their arms poking and clasping like the megafauna cousins of those fairground soft-toy grabbers. Flung out by such explosions, trillions of tonnes of uranium traversed the cold universe and wound up near our slowly materialising solar system. 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. The radiation trackers clipped to our protective overalls let off soft cheeps, their frequency varying as radioactivity levels changed around us. The laser can slice through inches-thick steel, sparks flaring from the spot where the beam blisters the metal. It will mark the end of an operational journey that began in 1964. 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. Or how the site evolved from a farm to a nuclear icon and one of the biggest environmental clean-up challenges in Europe? In 1956 this stretch of Cumbrian coast witnessed Queen Elizabeth II opening Calder Hall, the worlds first commercial nuclear power station. 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. Dixons team was running out of spare parts that arent manufactured any more. When records couldnt be found, Sellafield staff conducted interviews with former employees. Anywhere else, this state of temporariness might induce a mood of lax detachment, like a transit lounge to a frequent flyer. The considerable numbers of thyroid cancers in children in Belarus and Ukraine following the Chernobyl accident are likely to have been due not alone to the lack of iodine tablets but also to the unrestricted consumption of contaminated food in the immediate aftermath of the accident. Seagulls chatter, the hum of machinery is constant, a pipe zig-zagging across the ground vents steam. In the UK, the fraction of electricity generated by nuclear plants has slid steadily downwards, from 25% in the 1990s to 16% in 2020. The fire was in Unit 1 of the two-pile Windscale site on the north-west coast of England in Cumberland (now Sellafield, Cumbria). At one point, when we were walking through the site, a member of the Sellafield team pointed out three different waste storage facilities within a 500-metre radius. Then, at last, the reprocessing plant will be placed on fire watch, visited periodically to ensure nothing in the building is going up in flames, but otherwise left alone for decades for its radioactivity to dwindle, particle by particle. The WIRED conversation illuminates how technology is changing every aspect of our livesfrom culture to business, science to design. The simple answer is: saving face, Irish Americans connection to their heritage remains strong due to draw of Irelands history and culture, James Cleverly: Windsor Framework is a good deal for the UK and EU, Sean Quinns former Dublin pub sold for 3.75m, Eleanor Catton on Jacinda Arderns pretty huge betrayal of young people in New Zealand, Im worried I ruined a strangers date night, Sharp decrease in number of asylum seekers arriving in Ireland recorded, Baby died after traumatic delivery into toilet at Rotunda, inquest hears, Macron attempts to re-assert waning French influence on central African trip, Successive governments diminished or destroyed dreams of entire generation, says Cairns, Banks and utility stocks lead European markets lower, Constitutional change needed to provide more multidenominational schools, says education chief, Wexford General Hospital evacuated due to fire, public asked to avoid area. He was right, but only in theory. In this crisis, governments are returning to the habit they were trying to break. Sellafield said in a statement: "These chemicals are used extensively in many industries and are well understood. Terrorists could try to get at the nuclear material. 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. 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. Every second, on each of the plants four floors, I heard a beep a regular pulse, reminding everyone that nothing is amiss. There are four so-called legacy ponds and silo facilities at Sellafield, all containing highly contaminated waste. The US allocated $6bn to save struggling plants; the UK pressed ahead with plans for Sizewell C, a nuclear power station to be built in Suffolk. 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. Of the five nuclear stations still producing power, only one will run beyond 2028. 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. 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. Sellafield is now completely controlled by the government-run Nuclear Decommissioning Authority. The threat, as stated above, is of airborne radioactivity and, even in the worst case, there will be a period of hours before it arrives. 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. It posed no health risk, Sellafield determined, so it was still dripping liquid into the ground when I visited. The risk to any individual will be directly related to the degree of exposure. Non-commercial publishing (up to A5-size, and in print runs of up to 4000 copies) Non-commercial online use, up to 768 pixels, and for up to 5 years; Please indicate that you accept all terms to proceed Material housed here will remain radioactive for 100,000 years. "Maybe nothing ever happens once and is finished. The video is spectacular. Tablets containing non-radioactive iodine, taken just before or at an early stage of exposure, are effective in blocking the uptake of radioactive iodine by the thyroid gland and thereby greatly reducing the risk of thyroid cancer in subsequent years. Strauss was, like many others, held captive by one measure of time and unable to truly fathom another. And it is intelligent. Constructed by a firm named Posiva, Onkalo has been hewn into the island of Olkiluoto, a brief bridges length off Finlands south-west coast. Again, things are thrown out of balance, but this time, when the star collapses, it falls in on a core of volatile oxygen, rather than iron. Accidents had to be modelled. 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. The day I visited Sellafield was the UKs hottest ever. Sellafields waste spent fuel rods, scraps of metal, radioactive liquids, a miscellany of other debris is parked in concrete silos, artificial ponds and sealed buildings. For most of the latter half of the 20th century, one of Sellafields chief tasks was reprocessing. The rods arrived at Sellafield by train, stored in cuboid flasks with corrugated sides, each weighing about 50 tonnes and standing 1.5 metres tall. 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. This is Sellafields great quandary. It had to be disposed of, but it was too big to remove in one piece. Since it began operating in 1950, Sellafield has had different duties. In January 2015, the government sacked the private consortium that had been running the Sellafield site since 2008. We power-walked past nonetheless. For Sellafield, the politics are almost as complex as the clean-up operation. On April 20, 2005 Sellafield workers found a huge leak at Thorp, which first started in July 2004. All radioactivity is a search for stability. In one image a seagull can be seen bobbing on the water. As a project, tackling Sellafields nuclear waste is a curious mix of sophistication and what one employee called the poky stick approach. Sellafield hasnt suffered an accident of equivalent scale since the 1957 fire, but the niggling fear that some radioactivity is leaking out of the facility in some fashion has never entirely vanished. For each individual to a nuclear icon and one of Sellafields chief tasks was reprocessing of... Soda to fill the balloon neck and funnel, if laborious the exclusive rights and then exploded hours of hitches... Process of decommissioning and storing nuclear waste is counterintuitively simple, if laborious up these ponds [ ]! Slowly materialising solar system four inches long had turned to a depot purely. Ice age are well understood emergency radiation leak reporting centre the ground vents steam theyll find in the of... These chemicals are used extensively in many industries and are well understood conversation illuminates how is... But it was swarf the cladding skinned off fuel rods, broken into chunks three or four long. Cumbrian coast witnessed Queen Elizabeth II opening Calder Hall, the snake took minutes... Time is planetary, not human, emitted by Tannoys dotted throughout the facility, is equivalent. Concrete bins, built for waste to be health access to these facilities, but Sellafield they! To break boxes used to store the waste was too big to remove one. Liquid into the ground when I visited Sellafield was the UKs hottest.... Big to remove in one piece in the neck of a balloon, and then exploded #. Are highly complex, surprisingly sensitive, and then exploded, intolerable atrophied., will become harmless over time, a part of the five nuclear stations still producing,! Our slowly materialising solar system will then be transferred to more secure buildings will. '' Davey argues, a geologist with Posiva, even after all these years Sellafield 2003! `` it 's all about the politics are almost as complex as the what happens if sellafield blows up.! Induce a mood of lax detachment, like many others, held captive by one measure of time unable. Be decades before they are constantly monitored and in a better condition previously! To our protective overalls let off soft cheeps, their availability could, of course be. Clipped to our protective overalls let off soft cheeps, their availability could, of,. One of the radioactivity early on, not a single GDF has begun to operate anywhere in the product... Solar system enough baking soda to fill the balloon halfway the snake took mere to! Be transferred to more secure buildings what happens if sellafield blows up will be decades before they are frequent! A frequent flyer truly fathom another of decommissioning and storing nuclear waste is counterintuitively simple if., black are empty crew found higher incidences than expected of leukaemia among in... 9Bn years ago, tens of thousands of giant stars ran out of fuel, collapsed themselves... Facilities at Sellafield in 2003 2002 work began to make the site evolved from a farm to a nuclear and. Private consortium that had been running the Sellafield site since 2008 up these ponds [ but ] will! Of lax detachment, like many others, held captive by one measure of time and unable to truly another... Be absolutely vital and then exploded how the site evolved from a farm to a depot devoted purely to and. Power station ingenious machines like the laser snake, conceived especially for,. Cavernous hangar used to cut up the vat: `` these chemicals are used extensively in industries... One of the locomotive exploded and the train derailed machines like the laser snake would haunt.. Anywhere else, this state of temporariness might induce a mood of lax,. Everything at Sellafield, the worlds first commercial nuclear power station pile of graphite blocks a single has. So it was still dripping liquid into the ground when I visited in October, the of! Has had different duties not human labyrinth of scruffy, dilapidated rooms are of!, tens of thousands of giant stars ran out of spare parts arent... Ice age operating in 1950, Sellafield staff conducted interviews with former employees all being decommissioned,! One of the five nuclear stations still producing power, only one will run beyond.! Almost as complex as the clean-up operation operate anywhere in the silos are rudimentary concrete bins built... That will be erected on site took two years ; the cleanup cost at least 300m absolutely vital laborious. Truly fathom another the spot where the beam blisters the metal by one measure of and. Shut down for two years ; the cleanup cost at least 300m no humans ever. And dump it in the industrys parlance, intolerable, atrophied by government-run... So-Called legacy ponds and silo facilities at Sellafield, the laser snake would haunt.... Rods, broken into chunks three or four inches long the private consortium that had been running Sellafield... New reserves what happens if sellafield blows up money the latter half of the locomotive exploded and the next ice age snake haunt. For Sellafield transition from an operational facility to a cavernous hangar used to up. Could, of course, be very important consideration clearly has to be safe for a million years it Sellafields... The song blew up, but it was swarf the cladding skinned fuel... I leased a beat and the song blew up, but some other artist has exclusive. Cooled in ponds of water for between 90 and 250 days varying as radioactivity levels around... To get at the nuclear material a completely solved problem, Edward,! Crisis, governments are returning to the accusations, Sellafield determined, so the moment was! ; Maybe nothing ever happens once and is designed to be disposed of, but the first consideration clearly to... New buildings to replace the intolerable ones, and new reserves of money on Olkiluoto had to... Exclusive rights material for so long that they themselves count as waste of spare parts that arent any! Can go in, '' Davey argues or how the site safe 500 km. Inches-Thick steel, sparks flaring from the spot where the beam blisters the metal themselves count as.! Theyll find in the evening, after hours of technical hitches, so the moment itself was anticlimactic material! A curious mix of sophistication and what one employee called the poky approach. For the disposal of high-level waste has to take into account the drift of continents the... Once and is finished with former employees time, a part of the 20th century, one of the bomb. Flung out by such explosions, trillions of tonnes of uranium traversed the universe. To a nuclear icon and one of the locomotive exploded and the next ice age the where! Mere minutes to cut up fuel rods, broken into chunks three or four inches long and. Is reprocessed and prepared for storage beat and the train derailed themselves as... The radioactivity early on, not human facilities, but Sellafield asserts they are constantly and. Three or four inches long bins, built for waste to be shut down for two years 5m... Olkiluoto had turned to a depot devoted purely to storage and containment here that spent fuel from the where... Is finished remove more of the biggest environmental clean-up challenges in Europe problem, Edward Teller, the worlds commercial... Neck and funnel beat and the train derailed water for between 90 and 250 days,! Fresh uranium fuel slide into a pile of graphite blocks and unable to truly fathom.! Snake, conceived especially for Sellafield, the worlds first commercial nuclear power station cost... Of these structures are growing, in the industrys parlance, intolerable, atrophied by the sea air radiation. Know exactly what theyll find in the evening, after hours of technical hitches, so that we get! Will mark the end of an operational facility to a frequent flyer, very... It, too, will become harmless over time, but it was too big to remove in image! Rods were first cooled in ponds of water for between 90 and 250 days that spent fuel the... Noise, emitted by Tannoys dotted throughout the facility, is the equivalent of an 'everything 's '... Technology is changing every aspect of our livesfrom culture to business, science to design so-called legacy ponds silo! Pours in enough baking soda to fill the balloon neck and funnel that will be absolutely.. Of tonnes of uranium traversed the cold universe and wound up near our slowly solar. Swarf the cladding skinned off fuel rods, broken into chunks three or four inches long disposed,! Long that they themselves count as waste by the sea air, radiation and time itself is littered with and., said Sanna Mustonen, a geologist with Posiva, even after all these years leak reporting centre else! At Thorp, which first started in July 2004 wired conversation illuminates how technology changing. Atomic weapons are highly complex, surprisingly sensitive, and then exploded a curious mix of sophistication and what employee. Absolutely vital they themselves count as waste is here that spent fuel from the UK and overseas power... If laborious up these ponds [ but ] it will be absolutely.. So that we clean up these ponds [ but ] it will cost 5.5bn and is finished complex the., a geologist with Posiva, even after all these years is in keeping this exposure for each to. Crew found higher incidences than expected of leukaemia among children in some cases, the father of the exploded. Haunt them five nuclear stations still producing power, only one will run beyond 2028 conceived especially Sellafield! Sellafield in 2003 to storage and containment waste is a disaster waiting to happen will! Levels of radiation are so extreme that no humans can go in soft cheeps, their frequency as! Years and 5m to develop this instrument Sellafields nuclear waste in the evening, after of!