Now that Sweden is sending its nuclear waste for reprocessing at the Sellafield plant in England it is worth noting that almost 50years ago today, this site was the scene for the worlds first nuclear accident, an event which could have been equivalent to Chernobyl.On October 10th. 1957 a fire broke out in one of the Windscale reactor cores which led to dangerous radioactive material being released into the atmosphere. Luckily the engineers were able to put the fire out using water before things got as far as they did in the Chernobyl disaster.
One reason for the fire was that reactor was being pushed too hard since the politicians were desperate for it to produce enough plutonium to build a British Nuclear Bomb (a point worth remembering when Iran talks about peaceful nuclear power).
After the accident the name was changed from Windscale to Sellafield (Which was a good PR decision).
Now every time it gets a big shipment of waste for reprocessing there is an outcry. It was the same a few years back when the Japanese were sending waste there. I wonder what the Brits are getting paid for being Europe's nuclear dustbin?
