Qualla: Sellafield https://qualla.com/sellafield en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:16 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/t/t/sellafield-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Sellafield https://qualla.com/sellafield Sellafield: Introduction https://qualla.com/sellafield/ Photo credit Nigel Chadwick, CC BY-SA 2.0. Ten thousand people work here. They are the largest employer in west Cumbria, and on a clear morning their cars and buses converge from Whitehaven, Workington, Egremont, Seascale, Gosforth - the whole western strip of the Lake District. Sellafield, on the Irish Sea coast, covers 265 hectares of land and contains more than two hundred nuclear facilities in more than a thousand buildings. It is Europe's largest nuclear site and the most diverse on a single plot of ground anywhere in the world. None of those facilities is generating electricity any more. None of them is reprocessing fuel. The entire site, after seventy years of production, has been reoriented around one enormous task: taking it all apart, safely, by 2125, at an estimated cost of £136 billion.

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Image: Nigel Chadwick | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/t/t/sellafield-wp/gctt-sellafield-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Sellafield: From Munitions to Plutonium https://qualla.com/sellafield/ Photo credit Nigel Chadwick, CC BY-SA 2.0. It started as a Royal Ordnance Factory in 1942, built far from cities because the explosives work was dangerous and the wartime sky belonged partly to the Luftwaffe. It had rail access, water from Wastwater, and a workforce drawn from the Cumbrian coastal villages. After Japan's ...

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Image: Nigel Chadwick | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/t/t/sellafield-wp/gctt-sellafield-from-munitions-to-plutonium.mp3 0:06 2 full Sellafield: The World's First Commercial Nuclear Power https://qualla.com/sellafield/ Photo credit ENERGY.GOV, Public domain. Across the Calder River, four Magnox reactors rose during 1953-1956 - codenamed PIPPA, Pressurised Pile Producing Power and Plutonium, an honest acronym for a dual-use plant. Queen Elizabeth II officially opened Calder Hall on 17 October 1956. It was the first nuclear power stati...

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Image: ENERGY.GOV | Public domain

]]> Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/t/t/sellafield-wp/gctt-sellafield-the-worlds-first-commercial-nuclear-power.mp3 0:06 3 full Sellafield: Decommissioning https://qualla.com/sellafield/ Photo credit Alexander P Kapp, CC BY-SA 2.0. The bulk of the work at Sellafield today is undoing what was built. The Pile Fuel Storage Pond, the Pile Fuel Cladding Silo, the First Generation Magnox Storage Pond, the Magnox Swarf Storage Silo - these are the priority legacy hazards, and they are extraordinary engineering cha...

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Image: Alexander P Kapp | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/t/t/sellafield-wp/gctt-sellafield-decommissioning.mp3 0:06 4 full Sellafield: The Coast and Its People https://qualla.com/sellafield/ Photo credit Railway Clearing House, Public domain. The relationship between Sellafield and the communities around it is woven from competing threads. The wages are decent. The work is long-term in an area where good jobs are scarce. Sellafield families - parents, grown children, sometimes grandparents - have worked the same site ...

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Image: Railway Clearing House | Public domain

]]> Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/t/t/sellafield-wp/gctt-sellafield-the-coast-and-its-people.mp3 0:06 5 full