The most dangerous nuclear plant in the UK

On October 10, 1957, a disaster occurred at the Windscale nuclear facility in the coastal town of Cumbria, northwest England. Initially undetected, a fire broke out in one of two reactors that produced plutonium and tritium, key ingredients in Britain’s thermonuclear weapons as Cold War tensions escalated. The secret nuclear facility becomes the center of a potentially devastating event.

The fire consumed 11 tons of uranium, releasing dangerous radioactive isotopes such as iodine-131, cesium-137, and polonium-210 into the environment. These toxic compounds drifted across northern England and beyond, leading to fears of a wider disaster in Europe. The situation is even more precarious due to the possibility that the second reactor will catch fire, leading to a molten core and the entire region will become uninhabitable for centuries.

With few options, authorities decided to flood the reactor with water, a controversial method that has not been proven. However, this method prevented the fire, the reactor was immediately sealed and the reactor was shut down. Encased in concrete, toxic ingredients inside the plant will be safely stored for more than 30 years.

As global concern about climate change grows stronger, the search for sustainable energy solutions to replace fossil fuels becomes more urgent. Among them, nuclear power becomes a convincing choice due to its low carbon emissions and high efficiency. However, nuclear energy comes with a major challenge that has caused scientists, the military and the industrial sector to struggle to solve for decades: radioactive waste management.

This type of waste remains toxic for centuries, even millennia, raising key questions about safe separation from the production process and long-term warnings for future generations. The secretive nature of nuclear facilities often obscures the problem. For example, the Windscale accident resulted in approximately 200 cancer deaths nearby with far-reaching impacts on agriculture and public health, highlighting the dire consequences of poor nuclear waste management.

Renamed Sellafield in 1981 to shed its past negative image, the facility switched from producing nuclear weapons materials to providing energy to the national power grid. The factory continued to operate until 2003 before shutting down due to aging and unsafe infrastructure. Today, Sellafield has transformed into a small town-like complex, consisting of more than 200 buildings spread over 3.2 km. The consortium recruited nearly 12,000 people to carry out one of the most challenging dissolution projects in the world, lasting another 100 years with an estimated cost of about 160 billion USD.

Sellafield is among the most toxic industrial zones in Europe due to high radiation levels and huge amounts of untreated waste. Some of the waste is in temporary open structures, slowly decomposing while protective measures rapidly degrade. Addressing the risk is further complicated by climate change. Increased rainfall threatens to overflow waste storage ponds and release pollutants. As a result, the cleanup effort is remotely controlled by underwater robots to safely manage hazardous materials.

High concentration (HLW) and intermediate waste (ILW) at Sellafield are managed using strict procedures. With high radioactivity for centuries, HLW will undergo a vitrification process for longer-term and safer storage. Meanwhile, ILW encased in concrete or steel and stored in new facilities has a lifespan of about 100 years.