Talk:Sellafield

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[edit] Early 2003-2005 untitled discussion

Is this supposed to be in the middle of the last pharagraph? "['The worst accident in the world. Chernobyl: The end of the nuclear dream', Observer]"? -- Anon Sep 2, 2004


why is it so controversial? Kingturtle 22:46 May 7, 2003 (UTC)

As an Irish person, I would like to know this: If Britain is so confident about the safety of nuclear power, then why are most of the plants on the more sparsely populated West Coast rather than the southeast (except Sizewell I think)? I also object to the Wylva plant which is only 60km from Dublin. The only chink of light for us is that the prevailing wind on the Irish sea blows from the southwest. I understand that when the Windscale Accident 1957 happened, the radioactive cloud was blown south. But there is no guarantee we will be so lucky next time. (David)


OTOMH, pollution of the irish sea; it's a reprocessing plant, so to be viable at one point the UK was importing nuclear waste from elsewhere (not content with having trouble getting rid of our own crud...); high rate of cancer etc in the children in the area and those of employees. Heck, it's a nuclear plant. That's controversial. -- Tarquin 22:53 May 7, 2003 (UTC)

erm, yeah, i disagree - having lived in Whitehaven most of my life, and knowing a fair few few people who work at Sellafield, as well as others that don't, I would say the rate of cancer isnt very different from the rest of the country. Selphie 09:58, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I'm with Selphie on this one. Have lived in the area for a significant portion of my life and cancer rates are no higher than anywhere else in the country. The reputation comes from an apparent Leukemia cluster centred around the village of Seascale (pop. 2000) where a small amount cases occured. There is much debate over there is a link to sellafield or not. Medical opinion is mostly that it's not.--Stephen 21:49, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)

First, Windscale still exists. It is a UK Atomic Energy site; the site was split, and part was sold to British Nuclear Fuels and renamed Sellafield.

As for 'similar in magnitude to Three Mile Island'. The amount of radioactivity release (in Curies) was more than a thousand times that of TMI. We just weren't as worried about it back then. DJ Clayworth 21:33, 26 Nov 2003 (UTC)

The Three Mile Island page says "It is estimated that 2.5 million curies of radioactive gas were released by the accident." which sharply contrasts with the above and the main text. Anyone got any ideas to resolve? --/Mat 02:56, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)~

I've queried the figure on that TMI page (in the talk page) and quoted a source that says it was 3 x 10^17 Bq of Xenon 133. Blaise 08:05, 2005 May 11 (UTC)

From [1] : "The release of fission products from the TMI-2 accident consisted of 2.5 million curies of noble gases, primarily xenon and about 15 curies of iodine-131."

[2] gives values for different materials, indicating that the 20000 curie value for Sellafield refers to iodine-131. So, technically, both seem to be half-correct, but perhaps both pages should be updated to provide the full information.

I don't know enough about effects of radiation... for example, [3] quotes just the values for iodine-131. Is there a reason why a small amount of iodine-131 is more significant than millions of Curies of radioactive gas?

BTW, should the values be quoted in Bq rather than (or as well as) the old Ci?

--David Edgar

I think Iodine is absorbed by the body. I remember nuclear installations having iodine tablets to be taken in the case of emergency, so that the body would have a surplus of iodine and not absorb any more. DJ Clayworth 17:52, 27 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Different materials have different half-lives as well. Materials that have short half-lives are generally not as alarming as materials with longer half-lives. But the biggest factor is biological activity. Radioactive xenon just dilutes into the atmosphere and raises the global background radiation levels very slightly. Radioactive iodine sits in the soil and the plants until a human eats some, at which point it is deposited in the thyroid, there to discharge its radiation. --Andrew 07:41, 13 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I don't have any special expertise here, but with respect, I thought that it was the shorter-lived species that were more intensely radioactive, though for a shorter period. So, plutonium, with a half -life of 26 000 years, is not that dangerous in the form of a lump of metal. In the Manhatton project the physicist Feynman talked about touching a lump of it and finding it warm to the touch. And Xenon is also a noble gas, so will not become incorporated in the human body but pass in and then out by breathing. Blaise 08:15, 2005 May 11 (UTC)

You are right that isotopes with shorter half-lives are, all other things being equal, more dangerous. My Physics degree was 20 years ago and a bit hazy but I think that radioactive isotopes inside the body present *far* more risk as there is more likelihood of the radiation being absorbed by the body. Isotopes with shorter half-lives will emit more radioactivity whilst in the body.
However Aarchiba is right to comment on biological activity, something that gets absorbed an retained will do more damamge than something that passes through. Something that gets absorbed only in one place is particulary dangerous, iodine is only used in the thyroid gland and is relatively scare in the diet so pretty much all iodine we consume ends up there.
Plutonium as a piece of metal may not be the most dangerous thing that you come across but I would go out of my way to avoid it. Any block of metal sheds particles and plutonium dust in the lungs is not good news. Radioactivity aside, plutonium is a heavy metal and as such is bad for ones health - see [[4]] definition two.

FerdinandFrog 09:26, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

"The facility preceded efforts for peaceful use of nuclear energy.". Not really true. Efforts to use nuclear power for peaceful purposes in Britain date from 1946, before Windscale was established. DJ Clayworth 18:32, 20 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I removed the following: "It has been estimated that about 250kg ['The worst accident in the world. Chernobyl: The end of the nuclear dream', Observer] of plutonium have been deposited in the marine sediments surrounding the site during its lifetime." This is because I can find no reference to back it up, and the bracketed quote makes no sense. DJ Clayworth 15:18, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I think that 'is' the reference, not that I have found it... --Andrew 17:59, Dec 13, 2004 (UTC)
It needs a date to be credible. That way we can find it if we need to. DJ Clayworth 05:50, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I don't have a copy of this book, but there's a 1987 review here: [5]
and this page: [6] gives: ISBN: 0330297430 and Date Published: 1986
It's also dated 1986 elsewhere - for example here: [7] --David Edgar 13:51, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Looking up the reference, ISBN 0330297430 gives:
The Worst accident in the world : Chernobyl, the end of the nuclear dream

by Nigel Hawkes, Publisher: Pan Books : W. Heinemann (1986)

I haven't seen the book in person, so perhaps I shouldn't, but I'll put the plutonium claim back with a more specific reference. --Andrew 19:07, Dec 14, 2004 (UTC)

I have to say I'm still suspicious. The only reference we can find for this figure is from a book about a different subject. Nothing shows up on the web; there are plenty of websites giving very detailed and very negative assessments of what is being dumped into the Irish sea, but none mention a quantity for Plutonium. I think we should leave it out unless we have an independnet source. DJ Clayworth 04:10, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I'm a little suspicious too - I'd like a look at the book. The library here seems to have it, so I'll see if I can. But if your concern is the unreliability of the book itself, I think that's been addressed already by the way it's quoted. We're not claiming that any plutonium was dumped: we're claiming that there's controversy over the dumping, and we're giving an example of one of the claims. It would of course be better if we could give an example on the other side as well... --Andrew

I don't think there's any doubt that there's plutonium out there, and most of it got there as a result of deliberate discharges - see the bar chart for discharges of activity in the 1970s that seems to crop up both on anti-Sellafield websites and in BNFL publications - eg the annual report on discharges and monitoring of the environment - tucked away on their website behind the more PR bits. However, it seems to be common ground that the '70s were by some distance the worst period. The BNFL publication shows plutonium alpha discharges separately; if the composition of reactor grade plutonium given in the plutonium article is correct, then during the seventies discharges occasionally went above 10 kg/yr. Clearly that wasn't too clever, but it seems some way short of supporting an estimate of 250 kg of plutonium in Irish Sea sediments rjccumbria

The figure (actually 200kg) is reported in the Quality Status Report published in 2000 by the OSPAR Commission. I have amended the article accordingly. In doing so I removed the subsequent reference to a Bellona source suggesting a figure 60% lower. It would no longer be accurate given the new OSPAR figure, besides which I couldn't find anything in the source that actually discussed such a figure. --FactotEm 12:45, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] 2004 to 2005 leak involved waste

The spilled material was not intended for reprocessing into fuel, but was to be stored indefinitely. See, e.g., £184m aid to private energy firm: "BNFL is paid to take away used fuel and dissolve it in acid to recover the plutonium and uranium. For the privatised British Energy this is an expensive and unnecessary process because it has no use for the plutonium and uranium. BNFL is therefore paid to store it." Myron 13:24:07, 2005-08-10 (UTC)

[edit] Missing plutonium story should not be split in two

The plutonium discrepancy of February 2005 was evidence of the leak that had been going on since the previous summer. The missing plutonium was eventually found in the massive spill discovered in the summer of 2005. The February conclusions erroneously explained away the discrepancy as a statistical fluke, delaying proper investigation. If no one disproves this position soon I will reword the article to portray the February events as part of the mismanagement of the overall accident. Myron 23:13, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

My understanding is they are seperate. The "Materials Unaccounted for (MUF)" is an annual figure produced since 1977, way before the THORP plant problems. They relate to "losses" throughout the Sellafield site in all the processes. The 29.6kg figure released in Feb 2005 relate to the year 2003/04 and "conform to the pattern over previous years", see http://www.ukaea.org.uk/press/2005/17_02_05.htm For 1998/99 it was a similar 24.9kg (http://www.ukaea.org.uk/press/2000/5may2000.htm) The recent THORP leak is vast compared to the MUF "losses", and probably only started in 2004. -- Rwendland 01:34, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

Aha! Thank you. I was wrong. This clarifies the situation. Well, almost. It raises a new issue, though. Is there an annual apparent loss of plutonium at these places, or do some years find an apparent excess? Statistically there should be a random walk, but if there's consistently a bit of plutonium missing that would be worrisome. Myron 04:13, 13 September 2005 (UTC)
I wondered if the "discrepency" was random over years as well, but couldn't track down a list giving all the historical numbers last night. I suppose systematic sampling/measuring flaws over the various processes could explain non-random "discrepency" as well as real "losses". The plutonium is mixed in with large quanities of different solids/liquids throughout the process, with some nuclear decay still going on, so must be hard to measure accurately. I generally have little sympathy with Sellafield/BNFL, but it does strike me that a 0.5% discrepency is perhaps reasonable; in this case some of the news reports do seem to have been reported the issue too simplisticly. -- Rwendland 13:15, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] caesium 137

Is Sellafield responsible for the Cs-137, or has it come from Chernobyl? The Western side of Britain got alot of radioactive rain after the Chernobyl disaster.

'It has been shown that...' it says in the controversy section. Please cite a reputable source. Thanks.

--Publunch 13:53, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] First commercial nuclear power station?

According to the article nuclear reactor:

According to the Uranium Institute (London, England), the first reactor to generate electricity for commercial use was at Obninsk, Kaluga Oblast, Russia.

Is there a subtle difference in the wording making both correct, or is one wrong? Joe D (t) 23:47, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

I think their argument is that Obninsk (at 5 MWe) wasn't commercial but R&D/demo. Calder Hall at 50 MWe per reactor (200 MWe for the 4 reactor power station) and connected to a national power grid was truly commercial in itent from design (glossing over the fact fuel reloading was optimised for weapons-grade plutonium production in the early years), see [8], [9]. This Uranium Institute article [10] doesn't claim Obninsk was commercial, saying it "served as a prototype" and only "produced electricity until 1959 and was used until 2000 as a research facility". Calder Hall produced power all it's long life. But other sources take a contrary view, eg: [11], [12]. Do you think it's worth bringing these alternative views out in nuclear reactor - I doubt there is a clear view all would agree to? Rwendland 12:39, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
NB Just noticed Encarta says "the first large-scale commercial reactor generating electrical power was started up in 1956 at Calder Hall, United Kingdom" [13] which is a reasonably reputable source that backs this view. The European Nuclear Society [14] has perhaps a good diplomatic/NPOV view crediting both nicely: "On June 26, 1954, at Obninsk, Russia, the nuclear power plant APS-1 with a net electrical output of 5 MW was connected to the power grid, the world's first nuclear power plant that generated electricity for commercial use. On August 27, 1956 the first commercial nuclear power plant, Calder Hall 1, England, with a net electrical output of 50 MW was connected to the national grid." This IAEA Nuclear Energy history [15] avoids the word "first". Rwendland 12:58, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Decommissioning

There seams to be no mention of any decommissioning of the site. This BBC news link suggests that in 10-15 years the plant will be fully decommissioned. I feel it would be good to include some decommissioning time scales in the article as this is a very important part of the plant and its future. Ryanpostlethwaite 20:31, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Body Sella-field

The corpse-maiming scandal is now back in the press with a new government inquiry ordered. Perhaps merits to put the "on-going event" tag on the article's top

BTW, could someone please tell us if there has ever been a TV or movie film made about this story? I think it is highly likely, as I cannot imagine Hollywood would skip such a great story for a B-category atom-body snatcher horror flick - complete with rural british manors and celtic witch-ghosts who haunt the reactor because their sacred trees were cut down to make place for the power-station. 82.131.210.162 10:16, 19 April 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Issues

I added an article issues tag for the Controversy section (which violates the latest community consensus on these matters, see WP:MOS. However, I notice two thing: a) I added the plural template when I meant the singular one, and b) I'm late for work. Hope somebody fixes this for me .. lol Eaglizard 22:05, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Fair use rationale for Image:Calderhall.jpeg

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BetacommandBot (talk) 04:35, 12 February 2008 (UTC)