They dont know how much time theyll need to mop up all the waste, or how long theyll have to store it, or what Sellafield will look like afterwards. The humblest items a paper towel or a shoe cover used for just a second in a nuclear environment can absorb radioactivity, but this stuff is graded as low-level waste; it can be encased in a block of cement and left outdoors. And that put the frighteners on us because we had small children. Anywhere downwind of Sellafield during the releases would be rendered uninhabitable probably for generationsand people caught in the fall-out would have a greatly increased chance of getting cancer. About 9bn years ago, tens of thousands of giant stars ran out of fuel, collapsed upon themselves, and then exploded. On one floor, we stopped to look at a remotely operated vehicle, or ROV a steamer trunk-sized thing with a yellow carapace, floating in the algal-green water. This is Thorp, Sellafields Thermal Oxide Reprocessing Plant. Germany had planned to abandon nuclear fuel by the end of this year, but in October, it extended that deadline to next spring. Some industrial machines have soothing names; the laser snake is not one of them. Dealing with all the radioactive waste left on site is a slow-motion race against time, which will last so long that even the grandchildren of those working on site will not see its end. It took four decades just to decide the location of Finlands GDF. But making safe what is left behind is an almost unimaginably expensive and complex task that requires us to think not on a human timescale, but a planetary one. As a project, tackling Sellafields nuclear waste is a curious mix of sophistication and what one employee called the poky stick approach. Can Sellafield be bombed? We power-walked past nonetheless. In Lab 188c engineers are using a combination of demolition robots and robot arms to safely demolish and store contaminated equipment. The video is spectacular. A government agency, Nuclear Waste Services, is studying locations and talking to the people living there, but already the ballpark expenditure is staggering. The radiation trackers clipped to our protective overalls let off soft cheeps, their frequency varying as radioactivity levels changed around us. The remaining waste is mixed with glass and heated to 1,200C. Walk inside and your voice echoes, bouncing off a two-storey tall steel door that blocks entry to the core. The snakes face is the size and shape of a small dinner plate, with a mouth through which it fires a fierce, purple shaft of light. The pipes and steam lines, many from the 1960s, kept fracturing. How will the rock bear up if, in the next ice age, tens of thousands of years from today, a kilometre or two of ice forms on the surface? Four decades on, not a single GDF has begun to operate anywhere in the world. Sellafield nuclear disaster would spread across Cumbria - new map shows What are the odds of tsunamis and earthquakes? Every day 10,000 litres of demineralised water is pumped in to keep the pool clean. That would contaminate fisheries and travel north on currents, making fishing in western Scotland impossible. Has fiddlers ferry power station closed? Explained by Sharing Culture Before leaving every building, we ran Geiger counters over ourselves always remembering to scan the tops of our heads and the soles of our feet and these clacked like rattlesnakes. How radioactive waste ended up spending decades in open-air ponds is a story typical of Sellafields troubled past. "It was a great job. It feels like the most manmade place in the world. The site was too complex to be run privately, officials argued. Inside the most dangerous parts of Sellafield, Inside the most dangerous parts of Sellafield. If the Saturn V went boom: The effects of a Saturn V - The Space Review
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