ABSTRACT
From a distance, Sellafield, the largest industrial site in the UK, seems both incongruous and mysterious. The last time I visited, in 2014, I caught my first glimpse of the plant from high up in the Lakeland Fells in the declining light of a lowering, late autumn evening. My vantage point from a winding mountain road was windswept; above, the scudding clouds and below the land stretching westwards to the distant Irish Sea. To the north was the rugged bastion of the central mountain massif of the Lake District, dominated by Scafell Pike, England’s highest peak, half hidden in the mist. All around was the lonely beauty of hills with dry stone walls, bracken, tumbling rills and hardy sheep. Far below, at the foot of Eskdale, I could discern the nuclear plant, occasionally lit up by flashes of sunlight through parted rain clouds. From that distance, in that eerie twilight and primitive landscape, Sellafield nestled innocently on the plain in between mountains and sea, for all the world recalling to mind the silhouette and environs of a medieval monastery.
