This is... uh... slightly concerning

Old brochure of Sellafield showing Calder Hall reactor towers

Calder Hall was the world's first power station to generate electricity on an industrial scale (four 60 MWe reactors) from nuclear energy, closed in 2003. The towers were demolished in 2007.

Sellafield also includes:
The Windscale piles. In the 1990s, the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority started to implement plans to decommission, disassemble and clean up both piles.

The first generation reprocessing plant. As of 2014, the First Generation Magnox Storage Pond (FGMSP) remains as a priority decommissioning project. As well as nuclear waste, the pond holds about 1,200 cubic meters of radioactive sludge of unknown characteristics and 14,000 cubic meters of contaminated water.

The Windscale Advanced Gas Cooled Reactor. This reactor was shut down in 1981, and is now part of a pilot project to demonstrate techniques for safely decommissioning a nuclear reactor.

Magnox reprocessing plant
Thermal Oxide Reprocessing Plant
Highly Active Liquor Evaporation and Storage
The vitrification plant
Enhanced Actinide Removal Plant
Fellside Power Station
[All active]

The Sellafield MOX Plant. Designed with a plant capacity of 120 tonnes/year, it achieved a total output of only 5 tonnes during its first five years of operation. In 2008 orders for the plant had to be fulfilled at COGEMA in France, and the plant was reported in the media as "failed" with a total construction and operating cost of £1.2 billion. Currently closed due to the loss of Japanese orders following the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sellafield

Sellafield in 2011 (from a different angle)

THERE are few engineering challenges more difficult than decommissioning nuclear infrastructure. And there are few decommissioning challenges more difficult than Sellafield. Cradle of the UK's nuclear programme – and site of the 1957 Windscale fire, the world's first major nuclear power accident.

Last week, the UK government sacked the private consortium running the £80-billion-programme to clean up Sellafield, and gave the job back to its own agency, the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA). The clean-up operation, which was initially scheduled to end by 2120, costs the government £1.9 billion a year.

The surprise renationalisation comes after delays at two of the four waste stores prioritised for clean-up. The four ponds and silos contain hundreds of tonnes of highly radioactive material from more than 60 years of operations. The decaying structures are cracking, leaking waste into the soil, and are at risk of explosions from gases created by corrosion.

In an NDA business plan published last April, the emptying of the 100-metre Pile fuel storage pond, which holds used fuel and waste from the manufacture of the first UK nuclear bombs in the 1950s and 60s, was planned to be completed by 2025. But a timeline in a new draft plan circulated for consultation in December shows the job won't be done until 2030. Likewise, the £750-million task of emptying the 21-metre-high Pile fuel cladding silo, which has been full since 1964, is now scheduled for completion in 2029, not 2024.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22530053.800-shocking-state-of-worlds-riskiest-nuclear-waste-site.html
https://www.flickr.com/photos/q3inq8/5448896536

B29

This photograph sent to The Ecologist shows weeds growing around derelict machinery within the Sellafield facility.

http://www.theecologist.org/siteimage/scale/92/500/386201.jpg

B29

In the B29 pond building.

http://www.theecologist.org/siteimage/scale/92/500/386200.jpg

B29

According to nuclear safety expert John Large, who gave evidence to the House of Commons environment committee investigation into nuclear safety in 1986, the ponds were abandoned after they were overwhelmed with spent fuel during the 1974 miners’ strike when Britain was put on a three-day working week by prime minister Edward Heath.

“In order the ‘keep the lights on’, the UK’s fleet of nuclear power stations were run at full tilt, producing high volumes of spent fuel that the Sellafield reprocessing facilities were unable to keep up with. During the three-day week they powered up the Magnox reactors to maximum, and so much fuel was coming into Sellafield that it overwhelmed the line, and stayed in the pool too long,” Large told the Ecologist.

“The magnesium fuel rod coverings corroded due to the acidity in the ponds, and began to degrade and expose the nuclear fuel itself to the water, so they just lost control of the reprocessing line at a time when the ponds were crammed with intensely radioactive nuclear fuel,” he said.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/oct/29/sellafield-nuclear-radioactive-risk-storage-ponds-fears
http://www.theecologist.org/siteimage/scale/92/500/386199.jpg

B29

The Office of Nuclear Regulation has said: "Sellafield is ONR's highest regulatory priority and receives a significantly enhanced level of regulatory attention. It is also a recognised national priority to reduce the hazard and risk at Sellafield in a safe and timely manner.
"We are focusing significant regulatory attention on retrieval of legacy material from the legacy ponds as we recognise the high hazard and risk that these facilities present"

http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/2611216/leaked_sellafield_photos_reveal_massive_radioactive_release_threat.html
http://www.theecologist.org/siteimage/scale/92/500/386208.jpg

B30

The B30 fuel holding pond in operation.

http://www.theecologist.org/siteimage/scale/92/500/385932.jpg

B30

The B30 pond in 2010

http://www.theecologist.org/siteimage/scale/92/500/385925.jpg

B30 ('dirty thirty')

The B30 pond with seagull, possibly in 2013.

Building B30, colloquially known as dirty thirty, is a pond which was used to store spent fuel from MAGNOX power stations. The pond is 20 m wide, 150 m long and 6 m deep. Birds can land on its surface and take small amounts of radioactive substances with them. The pond was used from 1960 until 1986.

A particlar problem arises from the sludge that has accummulated at the bottom of both ponds and skips, which requires especially careful handling. The sludge has to be kept under water in order to prevent its spontaneous ignition.

Radiation around the pool can get so high that a person is not allowed to stay more than 2 minutes, seriously affecting decommissioning. The pool is not watertight; time and weather have created cracks in the concrete, letting contaminated water leak.

http://www.theecologist.org/siteimage/scale/92/500/386203.jpg

B30

The B30 pond after the water was clarified, possibly 2014, revealing the massive legacy of fuel rod skips.

The storage ponds at Sellafield, as shown in this photograph sent to The Ecologist, have been called ‘disgracefully degraded’ by the executive director of the Institute for Resource and Security Studies.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/oct/29/sellafield-nuclear-radioactive-risk-storage-ponds-fears
http://www.theecologist.org/siteimage/scale/92/500/386205.jpg