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Sellafield
Sellafield is a large multi-function nuclear site close to Seascale on the coast of Cumbria, England. As of August 2022, primary activities are nuclear waste processing and storage and nuclear decommissioning. Former activities included nuclear power generation from 1956 to 2003, and nuclear fuel reprocessing from 1952 to 2022. Reprocessing ceased on 17 July 2022, when the Magnox Reprocessing Plant completed its last batch of fuel after 58 years of operation. The licensed site covers an area of , and comprises more than 200 nuclear facilities and more than 1,000 buildings. It is Europe's largest nuclear site and has the most diverse range of nuclear facilities in the world situated on a single site. The site's workforce size varies, and before the COVID-19 pandemic was approximately 10,000 people. The UK's National Nuclear Laboratory has its Central Laboratory and headquarters on the site. Originally built as a Royal Ordnance Factory in 1942, the site briefly passed int ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
ROF Sellafield
Sellafield is a large multi-function nuclear site close to Seascale on the coast of Cumbria, England. As of August 2022, primary activities are nuclear waste processing and storage and nuclear decommissioning. Former activities included nuclear power generation from 1956 to 2003, and nuclear fuel reprocessing from 1952 to 2022. Reprocessing ceased on 17 July 2022, when the Magnox Reprocessing Plant completed its last batch of fuel after 58 years of operation. The licensed site covers an area of , and comprises more than 200 nuclear facilities and more than 1,000 buildings. It is Europe's largest nuclear site and has the most diverse range of nuclear facilities in the world situated on a single site. The site's workforce size varies, and before the COVID-19 pandemic was approximately 10,000 people. The UK's National Nuclear Laboratory has its Central Laboratory and headquarters on the site. Originally built as a Royal Ordnance Factory in 1942, the site briefly passed into ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nuclear Decommissioning Authority
The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) is a non-departmental public body of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, formed by the Energy Act 2004. It evolved from the Coal and Nuclear Liabilities Unit of the Department of Trade and Industry. It came into existence during late 2004, and took on its main functions on 1 April 2005. Its purpose is to deliver the decommissioning and clean-up of the UK's civil nuclear legacy in a safe and cost-effective manner, and where possible to accelerate programmes of work that reduce hazard. The NDA does not directly manage the UK's nuclear sites. It oversees the work through contracts with specially designed companies known as site licence companies. The NDA determines the overall strategy and priorities for managing decommissioning. Although the NDA itself employs about 250 staff, its subsidiaries employ about 15,000 staff across the NDA estate. Its annual budget is £3.2billion, the vast majority of which is spent ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thermal Oxide Reprocessing Plant
The Thermal Oxide Reprocessing Plant, or THORP, is a nuclear fuel reprocessing plant at Sellafield in Cumbria, England. THORP is owned by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority and operated by Sellafield Ltd (which is the site licensee company). Spent nuclear fuel from nuclear reactors was reprocessed to separate the 96% uranium and the 1% plutonium from the 3% radioactive wastes, which are treated and stored at the plant. The uranium is then made available for customers to be manufactured into new fuel, and the plutonium incorporated into mixed oxide fuel. On 14 November 2018 it was announced that reprocessing operations had ended at THORP after earning £9bn in revenue. The receipt and storage facility (which makes up nearly half of THORP's physical footprint), will operate through to the 2070s to receive and store spent nuclear fuel from the UK's PWR and AGR fleet. History Between 1977 and 1978 an inquiry was held into an application by British Nuclear Fuels plc for ou ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sellafield Ltd
Sellafield Ltd is a nuclear decommissioning Site Licence Company (SLC) controlled by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA), a government body set up specifically to deal with the nuclear legacy under the Energy Act 2004. From 2008–2016, it was operated under licence from the NDA by a third party Parent Body Organisation called Nuclear Management Partners (NMP). Since the termination of the NMP contract it has been brought back under direct governmental control by making it a subsidiary of the NDA. Sellafield Ltd's main aim is to manage the decommissioning of the Sellafield facility in Cumbria, England, on behalf of the NDA. The company employs more than 13,000 workers and its focus is to deliver accelerated nuclear decommissioning and clean-up programmes. It is also involved in nuclear fuel production and reprocessing, and international nuclear decommissioning and transportation. History Sellafield Ltd was formed out of the remains of British Nuclear Group (BNG), a s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
International Nuclear Event Scale
The International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale (INES) was introduced in 1990 by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in order to enable prompt communication of safety significant information in case of nuclear accidents. The scale is intended to be logarithmic, similar to the moment magnitude scale that is used to describe the comparative magnitude of earthquakes. Each increasing level represents an accident approximately ten times as severe as the previous level. Compared to earthquakes, where the event intensity can be quantitatively evaluated, the level of severity of a man-made disaster, such as a nuclear accident, is more subject to interpretation. Because of this subjectivity the INES level of an incident is assigned well after the fact. The scale is therefore intended to assist in disaster-aid deployment. Details A number of criteria and indicators are defined to assure coherent reporting of nuclear events by different official authorities. There a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Magnox Reprocessing Plant
The Magnox Reprocessing Plant is a former nuclear reprocessing facility at Sellafield in northern England, which operated from 1964 to 2022. The plant used PUREX chemistry (based on tributyl phosphate (TBP)) to extract plutonium and uranium from used nuclear fuel originating primarily from Magnox reactors. The plant was originally constructed and operated by the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA), but in 1971 control was transferred to British Nuclear Fuels Limited (BNFL). Since 2005 the plant has been operated by Sellafield Ltd. Operation The plant was commissioned in 1964 as both a replacement for the UK's First Generation Reprocessing Plant, and to process spent fuel from the national fleet of Magnox reactors. The First generation Plant was then converted into a pre-handling plant for Magnox reprocessing and was recommissioned in 1969. In 1973, after both plants had been shut down for one year for maintenance, a violent reaction called a "blowback" occurred in the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Calder Hall Nuclear Power Station
Calder Hall Nuclear Power Station is a former Magnox nuclear power station at Sellafield in Cumbria in North West England. Calder Hall was the world's first full-scale commercial nuclear power station to enter operation, and was the sister plant to the Chapelcross plant in Scotland. Both were commissioned and originally operated by the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority. The primary purpose of both plants was to produce weapons-grade plutonium for the UK's nuclear weapons programme, but they also generated electrical power for the National Grid. The site is partially demolished and is being decommissioned by Sellafield Ltd. The station's four cooling towers were demolished in 2007. The reactors were fully defueled in 2019 and fuel was taken across the Sellafield site to be reprocessed within the Magnox Reprocessing Plant. History Calder Hall was an early development of the existing Windscale site, and due to its size required considerable extension of the site to the sout ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Magnox
Magnox is a type of nuclear power/production reactor that was designed to run on natural uranium with graphite as the moderator and carbon dioxide gas as the heat exchange coolant. It belongs to the wider class of gas-cooled reactors. The name comes from the magnesium-aluminium alloy used to clad the fuel rods inside the reactor. Like most other " Generation I nuclear reactors", the Magnox was designed with the dual purpose of producing electrical power and plutonium-239 for the nascent nuclear weapons programme in Britain. The name refers specifically to the United Kingdom design but is sometimes used generically to refer to any similar reactor. As with other plutonium-producing reactors, conserving neutrons is a key element of the design. In magnox, the neutrons are moderated in large blocks of graphite. The efficiency of graphite as a moderator allows the Magnox to run using natural uranium fuel, in contrast with the more common commercial light-water reactor which ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Windscale Fire
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 fire was in Unit 1 of the two-pile Windscale site on the north-west coast of England in Cumberland (now Sellafield, Cumbria). The two graphite-moderated reactors, referred to at the time as "piles," had been built as part of the British post-war atomic bomb project. Windscale Pile No. 1 was operational in October 1950, followed by Pile No. 2 in June 1951. The fire burned for three days and released radioactive fallout which spread across the UK and the rest of Europe. The radioactive isotope iodine-131, which may lead to cancer of the thyroid, was of particular concern at the time. It has since come to light that small but significant amounts of the highly dangerous radioactive isotope polonium-210 were also released. It is estimated that the rad ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Windscale Piles
The Windscale Piles were two air-cooled graphite-moderated nuclear reactors on the Windscale nuclear site in Cumberland (now known as Sellafield site, Cumbria) on the north-west coast of England. The two reactors, referred to at the time as "piles", were built as part of the British post-war atomic bomb project and produced weapons-grade plutonium for use in nuclear weapons. Windscale Pile No. 1 became operational in October 1950 followed by Pile No. 2 in June 1951. They were intended to last five years, but operated for seven until shut down following the Windscale fire on 10 October 1957. Nuclear decommissioning operations commenced in the 1980s and are estimated to last beyond 2040. Visible changes have been seen as the chimneys were slowly dismantled from top-down; Pile 2's chimney being reduced to the height of adjacent buildings in the early 2000s. However, the demolition of pile 1 chimney has taken much longer as it was significantly contaminated after the 1957 fire. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cumbria
Cumbria ( ) is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in North West England, bordering Scotland. The county and Cumbria County Council, its local government, came into existence in 1974 after the passage of the Local Government Act 1972. Cumbria's county town is Carlisle, in the north of the county. Other major settlements include Barrow-in-Furness, Kendal, Whitehaven and Workington. The administrative county of Cumbria consists of six districts ( Allerdale, Barrow-in-Furness, Carlisle, Copeland, Eden and South Lakeland) and, in 2019, had a population of 500,012. Cumbria is one of the most sparsely populated counties in England, with 73.4 people per km2 (190/sq mi). On 1 April 2023, the administrative county of Cumbria will be abolished and replaced with two new unitary authorities: Westmorland and Furness (Barrow-in-Furness, Eden, South Lakeland) and Cumberland ( Allerdale, Carlisle, Copeland). Cumbria is the third largest ceremonial county in England by ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nuclear Fuel Reprocessing
Nuclear reprocessing is the chemical separation of fission products and actinides from spent nuclear fuel. Originally, reprocessing was used solely to extract plutonium for producing nuclear weapons. With commercialization of nuclear power, the reprocessed plutonium was recycled back into MOX nuclear fuel for thermal reactors. The reprocessed uranium, also known as the spent fuel material, can in principle also be re-used as fuel, but that is only economical when uranium supply is low and prices are high. A breeder reactor is not restricted to using recycled plutonium and uranium. It can employ all the actinides, closing the nuclear fuel cycle and potentially multiplying the energy extracted from natural uranium by about 60 times. Reprocessing must be highly controlled and carefully executed in advanced facilities by highly specialized personnel. Fuel bundles which arrive at the sites from nuclear power plants (after having cooled down for several years) are completely dissolve ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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