Overview
- This week marks the 70th anniversary of Calder Hall’s opening on 17 October 1956, when it became the first industrial-scale plant to supply a national electricity grid.
- The four Magnox reactors were confirmed fuel-free in 2019 after removal of all 40,000 fuel rods, allowing teams to shift from radioactive hazard work to demolition-style activity.
- Demolition work has gathered pace in 2026 with major hazards already removed, the four cooling towers taken down in 2007, and thousands of tonnes of asbestos and redundant plant dismantled.
- Clearing Calder Hall is intended to release scarce Sellafield land for new site infrastructure such as SIXEP support and to enable the proposed Pioneer Park clean-energy development nearby.
- Sellafield and the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority say the project is preserving specialist decommissioning skills and sharing lessons across the NDA while local events such as the Beacon Museum exhibition (19–25 October) collect memories and explain the demolition programme.