Sellafield

Viewed from the top of the cliffs at St Bees Head the Sellafield site sprawls over a large area of West Cumbria. It stores and reprocesses nuclear waste from all over the world. This area was one of the few that want to store nuclear waste in the future. The County Council said no but the local council said yes. The reason is because of the investment that it will bring to what is a depressed area. The old industries of steel and coal have long gone. Sellafield is the largest employer other than the public sector. The local council hope the proposed deep storage facility will provide similar opportunities.

I was born about 30 miles north of here and I remember when there was a fire there in 1957 which in retrospect was the worst until Three Mile Island. Farmers had to pour the milk away as their cattle would take up the radioactive materials and pass them on via their milk.