Ministers who visit Sellafield for the first time are left with no illusions about the challenge at Europe’s most toxic nuclear site.

One former UK secretary of state described it as a “bottomless pit of hell, money and despair”, which sucked up so much cash that it drowned out many other projects the economy could otherwise benefit from.

For workers, it is a place of fascination and fear.

Sellafield, a huge nuclear dump on the Cumbrian coast in north-west England, covers more than 6 sq km (2 sq miles). It dates to the cold war arms race, and was the original site for the development of nuclear weapons in the UK in 1947, manufacturing plutonium. It was home to the world’s first full-scale commercial nuclear power station, Calder Hall, which was commissioned in 1956 and ceased generating electricity in 2003.

It has been at the centre of disaster and controversy, including the Windscale fire of 1957. The blaze was considered one of the worst nuclear incidents in Europe at the time, and carried a plume of toxic smoke across to the continent. The milk from cows on 200 sq miles of Cumbrian farmland was condemned as radioactive.

Sellafield began receiving radioactive waste for disposal in 1959, and has since taken thousands of tons of material, from spent fuel rods to scrap metal, which is stored in concrete silos, artificial ponds and sealed buildings. A constant programme of work is required to keep its crumbling buildings safe and create new facilities to contain the toxic waste. The site is expected to be in operation until at least 2130.

The estimated cost of running and cleaning up the site have soared. Sellafield is so expensive to maintain that it is considered a fiscal risk by budgetary officials. The latest estimate for cleaning up the Britain’s nuclear sites is £263bn, of which Sellafield is by far the biggest proportion. However, adjustments to its treatments in accounts can move the dial by more than £100bn, more than the UK’s entire annual deficit. The cost of decommissioning the site is a growing liability that does not count towards the calculation of the UK’s net debt.

Sellafield is owned by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, a quango sponsored and funded by the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero that is tasked with cleaning 17 sites across the UK.

The site has a workforce of 11,000, with its own railway, road network, laundry services for normal and potentially radioactive garments, and its own police force with more than 80 dogs. It has almost 1,000 buildings.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/dec/04/sellafield-money-europe-toxic-nuclear-site-cumbria-safety