Inside Sellafield: Cleaning up Europe's most dangerous nuclear facility

Inside Sellafield: Cleaning up Europe's most dangerous nuclear facility | Times Reports

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Жыл бұрын

Few people ever enter the storage silo at Cumbria’s nuclear facility. The Sunday Times’s David Collins goes behind the scenes to see how engineers are disposing of waste six times more radioactive than the Chernobyl explosion.
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Пікірлер: 54

@adbogo Жыл бұрын

Sellafield will never be cleaned up. That is my assessment.

@nuclear_AI Жыл бұрын

Fantastic overview of some of the challenges we face and a reminder of the importance of the work we do at Sellafield

@HappyBear376 Күн бұрын

Challenges? I am sure you mean dangers and difficulties.

@HappyBear376 Күн бұрын

A masterclass in obviscating language.

@timetochange724 Жыл бұрын

Can I ask where does this Toxic waste collection process go, where is this material sent and what happens to the radioactive waste?

@bim-okoje5770 Жыл бұрын

They said the facility will be filled up and closed for about 100 years. Over time radioactivity of these materials decays.

@beeftec5862 Жыл бұрын

@@bim-okoje5770 Whilst is does decay over time, certain isotopes of the waste have a half life of thousands of years so it will be a very long term solution needed. To the OP, i'm not sure specifically with the magnox swarf but they tend to reprocess the waste if they can first, to get anything useful out or isolate the most dangerous elements. Then the high level waste is stabilised for long term storage (often vitrified into a glass product and stored in safety casks)

@clappedoutmotor Жыл бұрын

I think they are building a giant 'burial chamber' kind of bunker in Finland.

@Kylem6875 Жыл бұрын

@@beeftec5862 That's only the fuel itself that was in the rod. The issue posed from the likes of the silos are the corroded cladding and some fission products from the spent fuel, as the decanning process for Magnox fuel rods in Magnox Reprocessing differed to the shearing for the Oxide (AGR & PWR) fuels at THORP, whereby some of the spent Uranium metal never entered the dissolver. Solid and sludge waste from the silos or ponds is encapsulated and effluents treated by existing effluent treatment (which removes actinides and radioisotopes) on the Site. Additional facilities are currently under construction to further manage the Silos waste and continue the safe operations of the effluent treatment plants. High Level Waste is being processed, with the existing volume currently stored in storage tanks on the Site prior to calcination and vitrification.

@MsTilda2 7 ай бұрын

@@clappedoutmotoryep, besides the enormous plant they have now, finnished, and alreaddy shows cracks, really safe i say🥺💥

@columbus7950 5 ай бұрын

Might have to become operational again.

@m289958 Жыл бұрын

Saving the world right here. Heroes the lot of them

@MsTilda2 7 ай бұрын

😢 Awfull, I rember in the 90,ies, a tv program showing how some fuel sticks fell over from a transport belt, and just lay there, because they couldent get to them, they just lay there, mega radioaktive.. (sorry if bad spelling, im not english)..

@leewightman8619 Жыл бұрын

Dam I'm only like 30 miles away from this place

@HappyBear376 Күн бұрын

So 29 or 31 miles?

@Dragoneer 3 ай бұрын

One of the main problems that I’ve realized is frequently overlooked when we talk about nuclear energy being a so-called “green” method of energy production is waste management. We literally don’t know how to deal with it besides dumping it in a big hole and hoping it doesn’t leak out. If this is such a problem now with such low usage of nuclear energy across Europe presently, then imagine how much this problem would escalate when we start to deploy nuclear fission plants at the same scale as fossil fuel plants… I am in favor of going nuclear. I think we’ve got to a stage where the _production_ is relatively safe, and the lack of emissions associated with fossil fuels is appealing. I honestly believe that it is a big key to the global warming crisis that we’re in right now. But I think there needs to be a huge global effort into figuring out a feasible long-term solution to waste management i.e. we need to find new ways to _reuse_ this material rather than dumping and forgetting about it, or passing the responsibility to other countries and then blaming them for accidents… And I strongly believe the answer to the long-standing question of waste disposal is nuclear fusion. There is no long-lasting waste produced by fusion as there is with fission, and the amount of energy produced by such a reaction is about 4 times as much as fission. The difficulty is getting a positive power output, because right now we can’t influence such reactions without putting more power into it than we are getting out. But if we can all focus our effort on improving this we can accelerate towards a breakthrough which will change the world forever. I really hope that happens soon so that we can move away from the hazards associated with nuclear fission waste…

@namename11929 3 ай бұрын

U can have magnox and Thorp plants which once the fuel has been burnt you can get 97% of that energy back. Both these plants have started to be decommissioned on sellafied however this was done for many years.

@carrma3831 Жыл бұрын

The amount of people who still buy the old Oil and Gas propaganda chestnut of anti-nuclear sentiment is so frustrating for those professionals and experts who understand that, when operated correctly, they’re no more dangerous than an oil refinery or coal mine. These are old power plants, the lessons learned from early plants can be applied to the inception of new built plants. This is the future. It has to be, otherwise there will be no planet to power.

@ultra-nationalistodst8085 Жыл бұрын

Fossil fuels kill more people in a day than nuclear has during its entire existence

@user-xz6hl2yj9u 5 ай бұрын

Ariel Stanley

@donalddouglas5988 Жыл бұрын

Maybe if they change the name again it will make every thing safe.

@johnbraithwaite863 Жыл бұрын

That's a weird name for the Europa Building.

@paulmatthews2922 Ай бұрын

Biggest money pit in Europe and the biggest job creation scheme in Britain.

@XstaticState69 Жыл бұрын

Nuclear power is the way forward to make Great Britain energy self sufficient!

@Mivs123 Жыл бұрын

Are you kidding me? They don't know what to do with the waste, it is being put in steel boxes in water pits, these steel boxes, in twenty years time when they start to leak your nearest safety point will be Paris.

@HappyBear376 Күн бұрын

We have oil and gas aplenty.

@Jabberstax Жыл бұрын

Is this really more beneficial than burning coal?

@clarkey65 Жыл бұрын

I think you should look up the amount of radiation emitted from coal... might surprise you

@imkirbo3094 Жыл бұрын

Yes, significantly more beneficial, that's plainly obvious.

@clappedoutmotor Жыл бұрын

In the mid-long term for the planet, I'd say it's more beneficial, but it's not the answer to solving the global natural system collapse

@robdegoyim4023 Жыл бұрын

So glad we’re using tried and tested power generation now such as burning wood. No to new technology!

@RestWithin Жыл бұрын

That’s right, tell all our enemies how fragile the site is! 🙄

@stttttipa Жыл бұрын

Ummm... they already know it all. It is akin to telling someone not to take pictures of 100 year old railway tracks because those may be the strategic target.

@nedward.7442 19 күн бұрын

So it’s closed, what’s the difference now?

@user-co3xl6hj3x Жыл бұрын

Таймс пишет: Pound plunges to record low against dollar The pound fell to its lowest level against the dollar since decimalisation in 1971 this morning amid fears that new government’s economic plan will stretch Britain’s finances to the limit. Sterling dropped by 4.9 per cent to $1.0327 in as trading opened in Asia for the first time since Kwasi...

@krashd 7 ай бұрын

Yeah? And how about the Ruble?

@fenixfp40 Жыл бұрын

Sellafield, three mile island, Chernobyl, Fukushima. Nuclear power, clean, safe and cheap.😂

@andreas4494 Жыл бұрын

Hanfort site, La Hage and a lot of russian sites.... the people paid the price.....Not more not les

@kitburns1665 10 ай бұрын

HANFORD WASHINGTON USA - plan to be cleaned up in 77 years for a little more than $660 Billion. However in 3.6 million years you will be able to live there! Roll-on Columbia River. [TEPCO is dumping waste into the Pacific and should be able to destroy it]

@krashd 7 ай бұрын

All of those locations are still cleaner, safer and cheaper than the global damage caused by fossil fuels. Any idiot could find that out within minutes on the web.

@MsTilda2 7 ай бұрын

Agree, really safe.. No thanks, no matter what, thanks for writing that,, 🙏💪

@HappyBear376 Күн бұрын

Calm down dear.