A new report on threats caused to a number of nuclear sites around Britain by climate change and storm conditions includes references to the situation of the Sellafield site adjacent to us in Cumbria. The report from the Nuclear Safety Group says:
“Sellafield’s involvement in the UK nuclear weapons programme has created a substantial radioactive legacy that makes up some of the most hazardous work done on-site, 97 with spent naval reactor fuel placed in long-term storage in the MOD Wet Inlet Facility (WIF). Stored submarine cores from out-of-service nuclear submarines are still in the process of being transferred to the WIF.
The very great rad-waste burden at Sellafield, allied with the high-risk nature of operations there, combine to make it a uniquely hazardous facility – and future climate-driven annual flood risk to the site (via storm surge at the Cumbrian coast or overflow from the Rivers Ehen and Calder) should be assessed with this in mind”
Its almost a decade since Celtic League raised the issue of drainage and stormwater outfalls at the Sellafield site so the new report s a timely reminder those issues remained unresolved:
https://celticleague.net/bre-lang/…/enviroment-agency…/
Note: You can access other CL comment on this issue by typing ‘Sellafield Drainage’ into the search box on our Celtic League MAIN site. Sadly the Yahoo news group items from earlier in the first decade of this century are now dead links.
Link; Nuclear Consulting Group report:
https://www.nuclearconsult.com/…/Climate-Change-UK…
Image: Sellafield built a straddle of the Calder River and on a coastal plain ideal conditions for the perfect storm we warned about decades ago.
Bernard Moffatt
pp Celtic League Military Monitoring (29th September 2021)
