That sound, emanating from speakers within the massive fuel-handling facility, indicates that everything is operating as it ought to.
That is consoling because the world’s greatest plutonium stockpile and the great majority of the UK’s hazardous nuclear waste are temporarily housed at Sellafield in Cumbria.
This extremely radioactive waste is the result of the reactions that power the nuclear power plants in the United Kingdom.
According to Claire Corkhill, a radioactive waste management professor at the University of California, “it remains hazardous for 100,000 years” and produces radiation that can enter our bodies and harm our cells.
As Sellafield fills up, scientists argue we have to find a new location to store this waste safely.
The government’s declared goal of “clean power by 2030” includes nuclear power as well. Nuclear waste will increase with more nuclear power.
In the fuel handling facility at Sellafield, we watch operators using remotely controlled robotic arms through a lead-enclosed, one-meter-thick glass.
They manipulate joysticks on what appear to be massive arcade game controllers as the arms extract spent nuclear fuel rods from the hefty metal canisters they arrived in, which are still burning hot and extremely radioactive.
