Nuclear waste dump at Drigg

On the doorstep of a small village, there is a site which looks a little like an industrial estate, apart from its tall fences topped with barbed wire and huge gates. It’s not the kind of place you can just wander into – tonnes and tonnes of radioactive waste is stored here. The BBC was allowed to see what happens behind the gates of the UK’s only Low Level Waste Repository (LLWR). On Cumbria’s west coast, just outside the village of Drigg, an explosives factory that shipped about 400 tonnes of TNT per week during World War Two once stood. It became a nuclear store for low level radioactive waste in 1959 and is expected to continue operating until 2135. This week, a major operation is starting here to cover and secure an area the size of about 56,000 football pitches full of radioactive waste. Site manager Mike Pigott says it could survive extreme scenarios, including the breakdown of society. “We almost have to assume that future generations potentially could not intervene in certain scenarios, so we need to make sure it’s robust to protect people and the environment multiple generations into the future – potentially thousands of years,” he says. Vault eight has a capacity of 10,000 containers and is now pretty much full. The LLWR is starting to receive deliveries of aggregate material to cover it up to secure the waste, a process known as capping. The hill-like membrane covering the old waste will also be replaced, meaning it will become up to 50ft (15m) taller. They are expecting multiple deliveries per week, with 20 wagons per delivery bringing 1,500 tonnes of aggregates into the site. This new stage of work – expected to take about a decade – is also throwing up other problems as more of the WW2 legacy has to be managed. “From my personal perspective as site director for the LLWR site, it’s really important to understand what I have inherited from that Royal Ordnance Factory,” Mr Pigott says. “We’re now exploring bits of site – and actually excavating and constructing in bits of sites – that we’ve not done for 60 or 70 years in some cases.” During one operation, they discovered some discolouration in the water beneath the ground, with tests revealing the water contained picric acid, a material highly explosive when dry, used as part of the TNT production. Last year, LLWR was found to have breached its environmental permit by the Environment Agency (EA), because of delays with the capping processes.