Sellafield Sellafield Sellafield is a nuclear fuel reprocessing and nuclear decommissioning site, close to the village of Seascale on the coast of the Irish Sea in Cumbria, England. The site is served by Sellafield railway station. Sellafield incorporates the original nuclear reactor site at Windscale, which as of 2019 is undergoing decommissioning and dismantling, and Calder Hall, a neighbour of Windscale, which is also undergoing decommissioning and dismantling of its four nuclear power generating reactors. It is the site of the world's first commercial nuclear power station to generate electricity on an industrial scale. Sellafield was originally owned and operated by
Koeberg Nuclear Power Station too expensive to be viable. Nuclear power was considered because it was more economical than transporting coal to the existing fossil-fuel power stations, and construction of new fossil-fuel power-stations, which would have required 300 m tall chimneys to comply with clean-air legislation. Athlone Power Station in the city was too small to provide Cape Town's needs, and the Paarden Island power station (itself too small) has been demolished. Koeberg was one of the first nuclear power stations designed to be specifically resistant to earthquakes. The reactors at the Koeberg nuclear power station are built upon an aseismic raft designed –