Sellafield is a large multi-function nuclear site close to Seascale on the coast of Cumbria, England.
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Sellafield was the site in 1957 of one of the world's worst nuclear incidents.
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In 1981 BNFL's Windscale and Calder Works was renamed Sellafield as part of a major reorganisation of the site and there was a consolidation of management under one head of the entire BNFL Sellafield site.
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Sellafield was the centre of UK nuclear reprocessing operations, which separated the uranium and plutonium from minor actinides and fission products present in spent nuclear fuel.
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Many of the historic Sellafield operating practices have been superseded by better and safer alternatives.
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Since its early days, Sellafield has discharged low-level radioactive waste into the sea, using a flocculation process to remove radioactivity from liquid effluent before discharge.
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Sellafield has a number of radioactive waste stores, mostly working on an interim basis while a deep geological repository plan is developed and implemented.
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Central Laboratory at Sellafield is the headquarters of the National Nuclear Laboratory .
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The story of Sellafield is being told through a permanent exhibition at the Beacon Museum in Whitehaven.
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Sellafield staff did not breach any legal obligation, did not consider their actions untoward, and published the scientific information obtained in peer-reviewed scientific journals.
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On 18 October 2010, the UK government announced that Sellafield was one of the eight possible sites it considered suitable for future nuclear power stations.
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On 30 June 2020, the UK government along with EDF together with Rolls-Royce announced that Sellafield has been chosen as a site which will house various types of clean nuclear technologies such as EDF's leading EPR reactor together with Rolls-Royce SMR reactors.
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Windscale fire of 1957 at the Sellafield site was the subject of a 1983 documentary by Yorkshire Television, entitled Windscale – the Nuclear Laundry.
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Fallout, a 2006 drama shown on the Irish national TV station RTE, based on the false premise that parts of Ireland would need to be evacuated following a serious accident at Sellafield, following the accident there are evacuation riots, societal collapse and widespread health impacts.
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Sellafield was the subject of Marilynne Robinson's 1989 book, Mother Country: Britain, the Welfare State, and Nuclear Pollution, a critique of British nuclear policy.
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