Sellafield is home to 80% of the UK’s nuclear waste and some of the world’s most hazardous buildings. Now it needs to clean-up. Earlier this year WIRED was given rare access to Sellafield, a sprawling collection of buildings dating back to the first atom-splitting flash of the nuclear age. This was where, in the early 1950s, the Windscale facility produced the Plutonium-239 that would be used in the UK’s first nuclear bomb. In 1956 this stretch of Cumbrian coast witnessed Queen Elizabeth II opening Calder Hall, the world’s first commercial nuclear power station. Both buildings, for the most part, remain standing to this day.
Wired 17th Sept 2016 read more »