Feature Operations
Sellafield is the home of the UK’s nuclear industry and one of our most heavily secured facilities. As BEN JONES discovers in an exclusive visit to the site, railways have been essential to its operation for more than 75 years
It’s one of the most famous - some might say notorious - industrial facilities in the world.
Europe’s largest nuclear site occupies a 700-acre patch of coast in West Cumbria, ten miles south of Whitehaven.
With around 11,000 staff (up to 9,000 of whom are on site on a normal working day), its own police and security forces and miles of rail and road networks, it’s equivalent to a small town - albeit one with around 1,000 buildings and more than 200 tightly guarded nuclear facilities.
It’s also the most diverse nuclear site in the world and has been essential to the economy of the region since the end of the Second World War.
Supporting up to 40,000 indirect jobs - everything from construction contractors to park-and-ride bus drivers - it’s estimated that Sellafield is worth around £2.1 billion a year to Cumbria.
For 75 years, it has fulfilled a wide range of roles: producing weapons-grade plutonium for early atomic weapons in the aftermath of the Second World War; the world’s first commercial nuclear power station supplying electricity to the National Grid; reprocessing and storage of nuclear fuel; and the processing of lower grades of radioactive waste for off-site storage. It’s also home to the UK’s National Nuclear Laboratory.
By any measure, it’s a significant place - nationally and internationally important to the nuclear sector both as a facility and a world leader in the processes and technologies for handling dangerous radioactive materials.
Since its early days, it’s also been important to the railway as a source of freight traffic and workers commuting in from local towns and villages to its seaside station.
Over the years, the railway has been the safest way to move hazardous chemicals, radioactive waste, fuel for Royal Navy nuclear submarines and imported fuel for reprocessing, as well as flasks containing fuel rods to and from British power stations.
Without Sellafield, the economics of the wonderfully scenic Cumbrian Coast Line between Barrow and Whitehaven would be very shaky indeed,
