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Revealed: major safety fears at Europe’s most dangerous nuclear site



Sellafield’s controversial history dates back to the Cold War, when the huge industrial site played a crucial role in the UK’s development of nuclear weapons. A Guardian investigation can now reveal that Sellafield has failed to contain numerous threats, including a cyber security breach by groups linked to Russia and China, and growing physical cracks in its ‘most hazardous facility’.

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#Nuclear #NuclearPower #Sellafield #Cumbria #UK #News

40 Comments

  1. Horrific parasitic reporting, did someone at the Guardian just roll a dice or throw a dart at a board to choose which scaremongering article they were going to report on today? I imagine the thought process goes something like;
    Boss – "Guys, we need a sensationalist article about some vague risk of radioactivity"
    Reporter – "Oh hey, there was that thing in the 80s, chernobyl, that was it, that was radioactivity and that was bad! we can compare it to that?"
    Boss – "Excellent work my minion, run with that".

    The chance of anything going critical at Sellafield is nil.
    Therefore the chance of a steam explosion is nil.
    The risk of particulate matter entering the atmosphere from Sellafield is nil.

    There may be some risk of contamination from leaking fuel storage ponds, but they are currently decomissioning those, so where exactly is the story here? Oh wait, there is none.

  2. I waited the whole video for the big reveal of these major safety fears. None were presented. Instead it turned out to just be a generic nuclear scare word jumble. Shame on you.

  3. Gov has already responded, this video might contain false information….
    And no, I am not one of those people who don't trust the government, if anything I don't trust news outlets and their rush for clickbait , I make an idea of an average of opinions and common sense, but never trust the first words about a fact

  4. Ignalina power plant in Lithuania is where the Chernobyl series was filmed and is the exact same type of reactor as chernobyl, even though its been decommissioned since 2009. You cant seriously tell me the Sellafield is more dangerous.

  5. Makes me laugh in a very nervous way, and yet EDF Energy is planning a Nuclear energy power station in the UK .. Hey France .. how about building it in your own country?

  6. Too much scaremongering by conflating large quantities of low level nuclear waste with much smaller amounts of more dangerous fuel rods and waste. Unfortunately it's what the press does. I don't think it's amusing to produce a report like this where pictures clearly showing PPE plastic items contaminated by small amounts of radioactive material are presented as representing a huge danger. Perhaps Norway could explain exactly what would cause some sort Chernobyl disaster to occur in a recycling plant for fuel rods. Poor journalists presenting poorly researched reports and expecting to achieve what?

  7. Astonishing how childish and ill informed this is. Cue concerned presenter and Geiger counter crackling sound to irresponsibly whip up fear. Yes there is a large quantity of highly radioactive material at the site and many old buildings that are not ideal. Much progress has been made with this, why wasn't this reported? To draw an equivalence with Chernobyl is the worst form of gutter journalism.

  8. Full of misinformation, sensationalism and fear mongering. This poor standard of journalism is shocking at such a crucial time for the future of energy and left me with no choice but to cancel my digital subscription.

  9. Let us put solar panels on the roofs of all social housing & factories. Let us use the newer, more effective form of wind turbines, which have cylindrical drums that turn horizontally instead of the 'flower on a stick' style old ones. Let each town that has a river have water power turbines.

  10. Great reporting, Very Scary stuff indeed let's petition to move it down to Westminster London. How scummy of a move was that completely disregarding Ireland and Scotland welfare.

  11. "Revealed: major safety fears at Europe's most dangerous nuclear site" – When energy looted – it turns – curse.

    A curse that destroys in humans consciousness and the future.

    Karl Marx, Nikola Tesla, Balfour, Einstein, Huxley, Orwell, Turing – should be forgiven for thinking their systems can last forever.

    Finite fossil fuels are dangerously hypnotic to humans, their consciousness and mental capacity.

    Humans were not ready morally, ethically and intellectually to start the mass extraction of fossil fuels with the advent of the steam engine 300 years ago.

    The Magna Carta requires today overhauling – adding to it the right for humans to understand what Energy really is – before any other commandment;

    “In any system of energy, Control is what consumes energy the most.

    No energy store holds enough energy to extract an amount of energy equal to the total energy it stores.

    No system of energy can deliver sum useful energy in excess of the total energy put into constructing it.

    This universal truth applies to all systems.

    Energy, like time, flows from past to future” (2017).

  12. I imagine the nuclear-phobic government may be a reason as to why upgrading the facility is difficult. Not much can be done about adversarial actors besides better cybersecurity so that isnt really "their" fault.

  13. More dangerous than both Zaporizhzhia and Chernobyl? Really now. Methinks the Guardian's journalistic integrity hasn't improved. This is the kind of storytelling only overgrown kindergarteners would believe.

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