15 Facts About Sellafield

Sellafield is a large multi-function nuclear site close to Seascale on the coast of Cumbria, England.

Sellafield was the site in 1957 of one of the world's worst nuclear incidents.

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.

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.

Many of the historic Sellafield operating practices have been superseded by better and safer alternatives.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.

Sellafield has a number of radioactive waste stores, mostly working on an interim basis while a deep geological repository plan is developed and implemented.

Central Laboratory at Sellafield is the headquarters of the National Nuclear Laboratory .

The story of Sellafield is being told through a permanent exhibition at the Beacon Museum in Whitehaven.

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.

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.

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.

Windscale fire of 1957 at the Sellafield site was the subject of a 1983 documentary by Yorkshire Television, entitled Windscale – the Nuclear Laundry.

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.

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.