Sellafield - History

History

The Sellafield site was originally occupied by ROF Sellafield, a Second World War Royal Ordnance Factory, which, with its sister factory, ROF Drigg, at Drigg, produced TNT. After the war, the Ministry of Supply adapted the site to produce materials for nuclear weapons, principally plutonium, and construction of the nuclear facilities commenced in 1947. The site was renamed Windscale to avoid confusion with the Springfields uranium processing factory near Preston. The two air-cooled, graphite-moderated Windscale reactors constituted the first British weapons grade plutonium-239 production facility, built for the British nuclear weapons programme of the late 1940s and the 1950s. Windscale was also the site of the prototype British Advanced gas-cooled reactor.

With the creation of the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) in 1954, ownership of Windscale Works passed to the UKAEA. The first of four Magnox reactors became operational in 1956 at Calder Hall, adjacent to Windscale, and the site became Windscale and Calder Works. Following the breakup of the UKAEA into a research division (UKAEA) and a production division, British Nuclear Fuels Ltd (BNFL) in 1971, the major part of the site was transferred to BNFL. In 1981 BNFL's Windscale and Calder Works was renamed Sellafield as part of a major reorganisation of the site, as well as to possibly attempt to disassociate the site from press reports about its safety. The remainder of the site remained in the hands of the UKAEA and was still called Windscale.

Since its inception as a nuclear facility Sellafield has also been host to a number of reprocessing operations, which separate the uranium, plutonium, and fission products from spent nuclear fuel. The uranium can then be used in the manufacture of new nuclear fuel, or in applications where its density is an asset. The plutonium can be used in the manufacture of mixed oxide fuel (MOX) for thermal reactors, or as fuel for fast breeder reactors, such as the Prototype Fast Reactor at Dounreay. These processes, including the associated cooling ponds, require considerable amounts of water and the licence to extract water from Wast Water, formerly held by BNFL, is now held by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority.

On 19 April 2005, leaked radioactive waste was discovered from ThORP (Thermal Oxide reprocessing plant) through a crack into a sump chamber which may have started as early as August 2004, and was categorized as a level 3 event on the International Nuclear Event Scale, resulting in fines.

In February 2009, NuGeneration (NuGen), a consortium of GDF Suez, Iberdrola and Scottish and Southern Energy (SSE), announced plans to build a new nuclear power station of up to 3.6GW capacity at Sellafield. In October 2009, NuGen purchased an option to acquire land around Sellafield from the NDA for £70m.

On 18 October 2010 the UK government announced that Sellafield was one of the eight sites it considered suitable for future nuclear power stations. On 23 June 2011, the government confirmed plans to build a new nuclear reactor at Sellafield, to be completed before 2025.