Springfields is a nuclear fuel production installation in

Salwick Salwick is a village between Kirkham and Preston in Lancashire, England. The village is largely rural and is an extension of the smaller Clifton to the south. It is in the borough of Fylde, and in the Parliamentary Constituency of Fylde, and ...

, near Preston in

Lancashire Lancashire ( , ; abbreviated Lancs) is the name of a historic county, ceremonial county, and non-metropolitan county in North West England. The boundaries of these three areas differ significantly. The non-metropolitan county of Lancashi ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

(). The site is currently operated by Springfields Fuels Limited, under the management of Westinghouse Electric UK Limited, on a 150-year lease from the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority. Since its conversion from a

munitions Ammunition (informally ammo) is the material fired, scattered, dropped, or detonated from any weapon or weapon system. Ammunition is both expendable weapons (e.g., bombs, missiles, grenades, land mines) and the component parts of other weap ...

factory in 1946, it has previously been operated and managed by a number of different organisations including the

United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority The United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority is a UK government research organisation responsible for the development of fusion energy. It is an executive non-departmental public body of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy ...

and

British Nuclear Fuels British Nuclear Fuels Limited (BNFL) was a nuclear energy and fuels company owned by the UK Government. It was a manufacturer of nuclear fuel (notably MOX), ran reactors, generated and sold electricity, reprocessed and managed spent fuel (main ...

. Fuel products are produced for the UK's nuclear power stations and for international customers.

Activities on the site

The site has been making

nuclear fuel Nuclear fuel is material used in nuclear power stations to produce heat to power turbines. Heat is created when nuclear fuel undergoes nuclear fission. Most nuclear fuels contain heavy fissile actinide elements that are capable of undergoing ...

s since the mid-1940s. The site is notable for being the first nuclear plant in the world to produce

Magnox Magnox is a type of nuclear power/production reactor that was designed to run on natural uranium with graphite as the moderator and carbon dioxide gas as the heat exchange coolant. It belongs to the wider class of gas-cooled reactors. The n ...

fuel for a commercial power station (

Calder Hall Sellafield is a large multi-function nuclear site close to Seascale on the coast of Cumbria, England. As of August 2022, primary activities are nuclear waste processing and storage and nuclear decommissioning. Former activities included nucl ...

). The four main activities carried out on the site are: *Production of oxide fuels for advanced gas-cooled and

light water reactor The light-water reactor (LWR) is a type of thermal-neutron reactor that uses normal water, as opposed to heavy water, as both its coolant and neutron moderator; furthermore a solid form of fissile elements is used as fuel. Thermal-neutron reacto ...

s, as well as intermediate fuel products (

uranium dioxide Uranium dioxide or uranium(IV) oxide (), also known as urania or uranous oxide, is an oxide of uranium, and is a black, radioactive, crystalline powder that naturally occurs in the mineral uraninite. It is used in nuclear fuel rods in nuclear rea ...

powders, granules, and pellets) *Production of

uranium hexafluoride Uranium hexafluoride (), (sometimes called "hex") is an inorganic compound with the formula UF6. Uranium hexafluoride is a volatile white solid that reacts with water, releasing corrosive hydrofluoric acid. The compound reacts mildly with alumin ...

, or "hex" *Processing of fuel-cycle residues *

Decommissioning Decommissioning is a general term for a formal process to remove something from an active status, and may refer to: Infrastructure * Decommissioned offshore * Decommissioned highway * Greenfield status of former industrial sites * Nuclear decommi ...

and demolition of redundant plants and buildings At its peak the site employed 4000 people, but reduced demand and increased automation saw this fall to about 800 by 2020.

Future of the plant

Manufacturing is scheduled to continue until 2023. Decommissioning activities have so far resulted in 87 buildings on the site having been fully demolished. A Clean Energy Technology Park (CETP) has been set up to encourage new companies to operate on the site.

References

{{authority control Chemical plants of the United Kingdom Borough of Fylde Nuclear research institutes in the United Kingdom Nuclear technology in the United Kingdom Organisations based in Lancashire Nuclear weapons infrastructure of the United Kingdom