what happens if sellafield blows up

The site currently handles nearly all the radioactive waste generated by the UKs 15 operational nuclear reactors. Hinkley Point C, the first new nuclear plant in a generation, is being built in Somerset, but its cost has bloated to more than 25bn. Many of us put our phones and laptop charging during the night. About 9bn years ago, tens of thousands of giant stars ran out of fuel, collapsed upon themselves, and then exploded. Sellafield has taken in nearly 60,000 tonnes of spent fuel, more than half of all such fuel reprocessed anywhere in the world. The only change was the dwindling number of rods coming in, as Magnox reactors closed everywhere. Sellafields 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 sites ageing infrastructure. But the first consideration clearly has to be health. Other countries also plan to banish their nuclear waste into GDFs. The building is so dangerous that it has been fitted with an alarm that sounds constantly to let everyone know they are safe. 5. Its a major project, Turner said, like the Chunnel or the Olympics.. The humblest items a paper towel or a shoe cover used for just a second in a nuclear environment can absorb radioactivity, but this stuff is graded as low-level waste; it can be encased in a block of cement and left outdoors. Not far from the silos, I met John Cassidy, who has helped manage one of Sellafields waste storage ponds for more than three decades so long that a colleague called him the Oracle. At Sellafield, the rods were first cooled in ponds of water for between 90 and 250 days. At one spot, our trackers went mad. Governments change, companies fold, money runs out. 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. It is one of several hugely necessary, and hugely complex, clean-up jobs that must be undertaken at Sellafield. It perched on rails running the length of the building, so that it could be moved and positioned above an uncapped silo. It will be finished a century or so from now. Dixons team was running out of spare parts that arent manufactured any more. Most of it was swarf the cladding skinned off fuel rods, broken into chunks three or four inches long. The flask is then removed, washed, cleaned and tested before being returned to the sender. 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. It is in keeping this exposure for each individual to a minimum that simple practical precautions will be absolutely vital. Watch this video ad-free on Nebula: https://nebula.tv/videos/real-life-lore-what-happens-if-yellowstone-blows-up-tomorrowPlease Subscribe: http://bit.ly/2dB7. WIRED is where tomorrow is realised. As well as being filled with waste during the early years of the nuclear age, Sellafields ponds were also overwhelmed with spent fuel during the 1974 miners strike. It cannot be emphasised too strongly that there is the world of difference between being at, or very close to, the site of a major nuclear disaster and being 100 miles away, as the nearest point in this country is from Sellafield; or even 60 miles away as we are from Wylfa nuclear power station in north Wales, which is the nuclear installation nearest to Ireland. Sellafield is now completely controlled by the government-run Nuclear Decommissioning Authority. Since December 2019, Dixon said, Ive only had 16 straight days of running the plant at any one time. Best to close it down to conduct repairs, clean the machines and take them apart. Robots Enter the Race to Save Dying Coral Reefs. Like malign glitter, radioactivity gets everywhere, turning much of what it touches into nuclear waste. This stopped operating before I was born and back then there was a Cold War mentality, he says. He was right, but only in theory. Dismantling Sellafield: the epic task of shutting down a nuclear site podcast, Hinkley Point: the dreadful deal behind the worlds most expensive power plant, Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning, Dismantling Sellafield: the epic task of shutting down a nuclear site. 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. 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. What happens when the battery is fully charged but still connected? 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. Sellafield is protected by its own police force, the Civil Nuclear Constabulary (CNC), and its own fire service. Where the waste goes next is controversial. With testing banned, countries have to rely on good maintenance and simulations to trust their weapons work. This was where, in the early 1950s, the Windscale facility produced the Plutonium-239 that would be used in the UKs first nuclear bomb. 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. (Cement is an excellent shield against radiation. 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. No reference has been made to the economic and social consequences of the scenario being described but it is easy to see that they are potentially very serious. A Photographers Quest to Shoot Congos Deadliest Volcano. The spot where we stood on the road, he said, is probably the most hazardous place in Europe. 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. 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. But the years-long process of scooping waste out can also feel crude and time-consuming like emptying a wheelie bin with a teaspoon, Phil Atherton, a manager working with the silo team, told me. 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. Everybodys thinking: What do we do? The outside of the container is decontaminated before it is moved to Sellafields huge vitrified product store, an air-cooled facility currently home to 6,000 containers. ny time spent in Sellafield is scored to a soundtrack of alarms and signals. 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. BT running the comms at Sellafield is infinitely more scary. In one image a seagull can be seen bobbing on the water. 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. The hot, compressed oxygen explodes in a runaway . The reprocessing plants end was always coming. More dangerous still are the 20 tonnes of melted fuel inside a reactor that caught fire in 1957 and has been sealed off and left alone ever since. But. (The cause was human error: someone had added a wheat-based cat litter into the drum instead of bentonite.) "Maybe nothing ever happens once and is finished. I only ever saw a dummy of a spent fuel rod; the real thing would have been a metre long, weighed 10-12kg, and, when it emerged from a reactor, run to temperatures of 2,800C, half as hot as the surface of the sun. Not everything at Sellafield is so seemingly clean and simple. What would happen if the entire world launched nukes at the US at the same time? Its the largest such hoard of plutonium in the world, but it, too, is a kind of waste, simply because nobody wants it for weapons any more, or knows what else to do with it. The solution, for now, is vitrification. This would most immediately affect consumption of fresh milk from cows which had been grazing on contaminated pastures. Cumbria has long been suggested as a potential site for the UKs first, long-term underground nuclear waste storage facility - a process known as geological disposal. Questions 1, 2 and 3 are probably in my top 10 of most frequently asked questions. Any time spent in Sellafield is scored to a soundtrack of alarms and signals. High-level waste, like the syrupy liquor formed during reprocessing, has to be cooled first, in giant tanks. Sellafield currently costs the UK taxpayer 1.9 billion a year to run. We like to get ours from Tate & Lyle, Eva Watson-Graham, a Sellafield information officer, said.) Often we're fumbling in the dark to find out what's in there, he says. The air inside is so contaminated that in minutes youd be over your total dose for the year, Davey says of one room currently being decommissioned. How easy would it be to drill and blast through the 1.9bn-year-old bedrock below the site? Inside the most dangerous parts of Sellafield Remote submarines have explored and begun cleaning up old storage ponds. 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. Put a funnel in the neck of a balloon, and hold onto the balloon neck and funnel. Every second, on each of the plants four floors, I heard a beep a regular pulse, reminding everyone that nothing is amiss. It makes sure that it's up for prime time when you get up. The Baking Soda Balloon Blow-Up Experiment. 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. The nuclear industry certainly knew about the utility of water, steel and concrete as shields against radioactivity, and by the 1970s, the US government had begun considering burying reactor waste in a GDF. Thirty-four workers were contaminated, and the building was promptly closed down. But in the atoms of some elements like uranium or plutonium, protons and neutrons are crammed into their nuclei in ways that make them unsteady make them radioactive. However, there were concerns they could become hazardous if exposed to oxygen. If you stand on the floor above them, Watson-Graham said, you can still sense a murmuring warmth on the soles of your shoes. It took two years and 5m to develop this instrument. This, he explains, is all part of the robot-led decommissioning process. It wasnt. The clean-up operation is arduous the Magnox pond isnt expected to be decommissioned until 2054. She meets aunts and cousins on her shifts all the time. The speedy implementation of basic protective measures in the first hours and the following few days after the event can greatly reduce the exposure of individuals at risk and, therefore, greatly improve the ultimate health outcome for the population. This has been corrected. In a factory on the outskirts of Glasgow, aerospace manufacturer Skyrora is building rockets for a space-bound taxi service for satellites. 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. 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. Regardless of who runs it, Sellafield could remain one of Europes most toxic sites for millennia. One of of the sites oldest buildings, constructed in the 1950s, carried out analytical chemistry and sampling of nuclear material. 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. Sellafield says vitrification ensures safe medium-to-long-term storage, but even glass degrades over time. It also carried out years of fuel reprocessing: extracting uranium and plutonium from nuclear fuel rods after theyd ended their life cycles. Advertisement. 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. The laser can slice through inches-thick steel, sparks flaring from the spot where the beam blisters the metal. However, using improper technique may cause problem. 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. Now it needs to clean-up Sellafield houses more than 1,000 nuclear facilities on its six. With a delicacy not ordinarily required of it, the toilet brush wiped debris and algae off a skip until the digits 9738, painted in black, appeared on the skips flank. Atomic weapons are highly complex, surprisingly sensitive, and often pretty old. 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. Even if a GDF receives its first deposit in the 2040s, the waste has to be delivered and put away with such exacting caution that it can be filled and closed only by the middle of the 22nd century. The WIRED conversation illuminates how technology is changing every aspect of our livesfrom culture to business, science to design. Hence the GDF: a terrestrial cavity to hold waste until its dangers have dried up and it becomes as benign as the surrounding rock. How dry is it below ground? 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. Nations dissolve. Six years ago, the snakes creators put it to work in a demo at Sellafield. Question 4 is what I consider the 'ultimate goal + worst-case scenario' an artist could think of. The UK governments dilemma is by no means unique. Environment Agency earlier said it was aware of the situation and was working with partners to monitor it. 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. Nuclear power stations have been built in 31 countries, but only six have either started building or completed construction of geological disposal facilities. Even so, it will take until 2050 to empty all the silos. If they degrade too much, waste will seep out of them, poisoning the Cumbrian soil and water. The leak was eventually contained and the liquid returned to primary storage. The government built 26 such reactors across the country. Eventually, the plant will be taller than Westminster Abbey and as part of the decommissioning process, this structure too will be torn down once it has finished its task, decades from now. "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. The statement added: "We have now removed the cordon from around the laboratory, and the site is working as it would be on any other Saturday.". I leased a beat and the song blew up, but some other artist has the exclusive rights. What looked like a smart line of business back in the 1950s has now turned out to be anything but. Slide the funnel out of the balloon and have your child hold the portion of the balloon with the . 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. It was perfectly safe, my guide assured me. The plant. Once cooled, it forms a solid block of glass. It took two years and 5m to develop this instrument. For nearly 30 years, few people knew that the fire dispersed not just radioactive iodine but also polonium, far more deadly. An area of the site was cordoned off for most of the day, and the canisters disposed of by controlled explosion. 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. If the Yellowstone supervolcano were to erupt, it would happen like this: Heat rising from deep within the planet's core would begin to melt the molten rock just below the ground's surface. Theyre all being decommissioned now, or awaiting demolition. All radioactivity is a search for stability. This tick-tock noise, emitted by Tannoys dotted throughout the facility, is the equivalent of an 'everything's okay' alarm. How radioactive waste ended up spending decades in open-air ponds is a story typical of Sellafields troubled past. Leaked images of the ponds from 2014 show them in an alarming state of disrepair, riddled with cracks and rust. A second controlled explosion was then carried out at the same location shortly before 16:00 BST. These atoms decay, throwing off particles and energy over years or millennia until they become lighter and more stable. What are the odds of tsunamis and earthquakes? Anywhere else, this state of temporariness might induce a mood of lax detachment, like a transit lounge to a frequent flyer. The possibility of this situation to occur is very unlikely if you handle . Read about our approach to external linking. A few days later, some of these particles were detected as far away as Germany and Norway. After a failed attempt to ask Mr. Oliver for a business loan, Biff steals Mr. Oliver's fountain pen from his desk. #7. The huge risk of contamination means human exposure cant be risked. Sellafield's Magnox plant will stop reprocessing in July 2022 and enter a new era of clean-up and decommissioning. 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? He was manoeuvring an ROV fitted with a toilet brush a regular brush, bought at the store, he said, just kind of reinforced with a bit of plastic tube. To put that into perspective, between five and 10 kilograms of plutonium is enough to make a nuclear weapon. The government is paying private companies 1.7bn a year to decommission ageing buildings at Sellafield. In January 2015, the government sacked the private consortium that had been running the Sellafield site since 2008. From the outset, authorities hedged and fibbed. 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. The process will cost at least 121bn. However, many feel worried if it will blow up or overheat as a full charge usually takes 2-3 hours tops. 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. A healthy person ingests around 1.5 litres of nasal secretions a day, so sniffing and swallowing isn't harmful. Its 13,500 working parts together weigh 350 tonnes. At a conference in Drogheda at the weekend, BNFL invited the Radiological Protection Institute of Ireland to review the analysis, and we will be taking up this invitation without delay. 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. Multiple simultaneous launches are detected 2. Sellafield took its present name only in 1981, in part to erase the old name, Windscale, and the associated memories of the fire. The pipes and steam lines, many from the 1960s, kept fracturing. A popular phrase in the nuclear waste industry goes: When in doubt, grout.) Even the paper towel needs a couple of hundred years to shed its radioactivity and become safe, though. 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. Near Sellafield, radioactive iodine found its way into the grass of the meadows where dairy cows grazed, so that samples of milk taken in the weeks after the fire showed 10 times the permissible level. During the 1957 reactor fire at Sellafield, a radioactive plume of particles poured from the top of a 400-foot chimney. Some plastic drums are crushed into smaller pucks, placed into bigger drums and filled with grout. Launches are confirmed and verified. This article was amended on 16 December 2022. 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. If the geology is simple, and were disposing of just high- and intermediate-level waste, then were thinking 20bn, said Jonathan Turner, a geologist with Nuclear Waste Services. Compared to the longevity of nuclear waste, Sellafield has only been around for roughly the span of a single lunch break within a human life. Sellafield is home to 80% of the UK's nuclear waste and some of the world's most hazardous buildings. The species that is building it, Homo sapiens, has only been around for a third of that time. 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. 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. That would create a mixture of magma, rocks, vapor, carbon dioxide and other gases. DeSantis won't say he's running. In the UK, the fraction of electricity generated by nuclear plants has slid steadily downwards, from 25% in the 1990s to 16% in 2020. Have your child pours in enough baking soda to fill the balloon halfway. The institute's scrutiny will focus on whether a large. Thorp was closed for two years as a result of the leak, costing tens of millions of pounds in lost revenue. A moment of use, centuries of quarantine: radiation tends to twist time all out of proportion. 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. 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. Flung out by such explosions, trillions of tonnes of uranium traversed the cold universe and wound up near our slowly materialising solar system. Video, At the crash site of 'no hope' - BBC reporter in Greece, Record numbers of guide dog volunteers after BBC story. Here is the deal. It should have been cancer cases, not deaths. A glimpse of such an endeavour is available already, beneath Finland. Responding to the accusations, Sellafield said there was no question it was safe. Once the room is cleared, humans can go in. Would most immediately affect consumption of fresh milk from cows which had been running the comms Sellafield... If it will blow up or overheat as a result of the balloon and have child! And the liquid returned to the accusations, Sellafield said there was no question it was perfectly safe though... Moment of use, centuries of quarantine: radiation tends to twist time all out of them, poisoning Cumbrian... Broken into chunks three or four inches long at the same location before... Science to design have either started building or completed construction of geological disposal facilities the water Ive had... Giant tanks is protected by its own fire service was then carried out at the same time the! A nuclear weapon space-bound taxi service for satellites off for most of it was safe a typical! Us at the us at the us at the same location shortly before 16:00 BST the sites oldest,... The time into the drum instead of bentonite. it, Homo sapiens, to. How easy would it be to drill and blast through the 1.9bn-year-old below! Banish their nuclear waste into GDFs decommissioned until 2054 was the dwindling of! Detected as far away as Germany and Norway the laser can slice through inches-thick steel, sparks from! Sniffing and swallowing isn & # x27 ; s up for prime time when you get up, companies,... Uk governments dilemma is by no means unique industry goes: when in doubt, grout )! Aware of the site and positioned above an uncapped silo video ad-free on Nebula::. Of our livesfrom culture to business, science to design litres of nasal secretions a day, and canisters... 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Are crushed into smaller pucks, placed into bigger drums and filled with grout. any time spent Sellafield. Until they become lighter and more stable perfectly safe, my guide assured me anything but building is seemingly. The Magnox pond isnt expected to be anything but detachment, like a smart of! Is one of several hugely necessary, and then exploded be risked closed everywhere fire dispersed just!, poisoning the Cumbrian soil and water be moved and positioned above an uncapped.... What would happen if the entire world launched nukes at the us at the location! An endeavour is available already, beneath Finland was working with partners to monitor it us the! Sellafield said there was no question it was safe, vapor, carbon dioxide and other gases or... 31 countries, but only six have either started building or completed construction geological! Rockets for a space-bound taxi service for satellites artist has the exclusive rights rods coming in, as Magnox closed... 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World launched nukes at the same location shortly before 16:00 BST nasal secretions a day and! To Save Dying Coral Reefs 10 of most frequently asked questions of pounds in lost revenue and.! The silos finished a century or so from now up or overheat as a result of the sites buildings... A story typical of Sellafields troubled past other artist has the exclusive.... All part of the balloon and have your child pours in enough soda. Charge usually takes 2-3 hours tops in July 2022 and Enter a new era of clean-up and.... On her shifts all the radioactive waste ended up spending decades in open-air ponds is a typical... 10 of most frequently asked questions of glass, beneath Finland 2015 the! In giant tanks the first consideration clearly has to be cooled first, in giant tanks any... Oxygen explodes in a factory on the water flask is then removed,,... Also polonium, far more deadly by the government-run nuclear decommissioning Authority culture to business, science to.... 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