Max Ferdinand Perutz was an Austrian-born British molecular biologist, who shared the 1962 Nobel Prize for Chemistry with John Kendrew, for their studies of the structures of haemoglobin and myoglobin. He went on to win the Royal Medal of the Royal Society in 1971 and the Copley Medal in 1979. At Cambridge he founded and chaired (1962–79) The MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB), fourteen of whose scientists have won Nobel Prizes.
Sellafield, formerly known as Windscale, 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 nuclear power generation from 1956 to 2003, and nuclear fuel reprocessing from 1952 to 2022.
The International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale (INES) was introduced in 1990 by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in order to enable prompt communication of safety significant information in case of nuclear accidents.
The Civil Nuclear Constabulary (CNC) is a special police force responsible for providing law enforcement and security at any relevant nuclear site and for security of nuclear materials in transit within the United Kingdom. The force has over 1,500 police officers and support staff. Officers within the force are authorised firearms officers due to the nature of the industry the force protects.
The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) is a non-departmental public body of the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero formed by the Energy Act 2004. It evolved from the Coal and Nuclear Liabilities Unit of the Department of Trade and Industry. It came into existence during late 2004, and took on its main functions on 1 April 2005. Its purpose is to deliver the decommissioning and clean-up of the UK's civil nuclear legacy in a safe and cost-effective manner, and where possible to accelerate programmes of work that reduce hazard.
Marilynne Summers Robinson is an American novelist and essayist. Across her writing career, Robinson has received numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2005, National Humanities Medal in 2012, and the 2016 Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction. In 2016, Robinson was named in Time magazine's list of 100 most influential people. Robinson began teaching at the Iowa Writers' Workshop in 1991 and retired in the spring of 2016.
Sellafield Ltd is a British nuclear decommissioning Site Licence Company (SLC) controlled by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA), a UK government body set up specifically to deal with the nuclear legacy under the Energy Act 2004. From 2008–2016, it was operated under licence from the NDA by a third party Parent Body Organisation called Nuclear Management Partners (NMP). Since the termination of the NMP contract it has been brought back under direct governmental control by making it a subsidiary of the NDA.
Nuala Ahern is an Irish former Green Party member of the European Parliament representing Leinster in Ireland from 1994–2004. Ahern became active in politics in 1991 becoming elected to Wicklow County Council. She joined the Green Party in 1989.
The Thermal Oxide Reprocessing Plant, or THORP, is a nuclear fuel reprocessing plant at Sellafield in Cumbria, England. THORP is owned by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority and operated by Sellafield Ltd.
Sellafield is a railway station on the Cumbrian Coast Line, which runs between Carlisle and Barrow-in-Furness. The station, situated 35 miles (56 km) north-west of Barrow-in-Furness, serves Sellafield in Cumbria. It is owned by Network Rail and managed by Northern Trains.
The Magnox Reprocessing Plant is a former nuclear reprocessing facility at Sellafield in northern England, which operated from 1964 to 2022. The plant used PUREX chemistry to extract plutonium and uranium from used nuclear fuel originating primarily from Magnox reactors. The plant was originally constructed and operated by the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA), but in 1971 control was transferred to British Nuclear Fuels Limited (BNFL). Since 2005 the plant has been operated by Sellafield Ltd.
Gemma Donna Louise D'Arcy was born in Cumbria in November 1983. She was briefly famous in Britain due to suffering chronic myeloid leukaemia, extremely rare in children and hypothesised to have been caused by her family living in proximity to the Sellafield nuclear power plant.
Moor Row railway station was built by the Whitehaven, Cleator and Egremont Railway. It served the village of Moor Row, Cumbria, England.
Woodend railway station was planned by the Whitehaven, Cleator and Egremont Railway on its Sellafield to Moor Row branch, but by the time the station opened the company had been bought out by the LNWR and Furness Railway who operated the line jointly until grouping in 1923.
Kristen Iversen is an American writer of nonfiction and fiction. Her books include Full Body Burden: Growing Up in the Nuclear Shadow of Rocky Flats, Molly Brown: Unraveling the Myth and Shadow Boxing: Art and Craft in Creative Nonfiction, as well as the anthologies Don't Look Now: Things We Wish We Hadn't Seen and Doom with a View: Historical and Cultural Contexts of the Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant. She is a Professor in English and Creative Writing at the University of Cincinnati and Literary Nonfiction Editor of The Cincinnati Review. Iversen was chosen to be a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Bergen, Norway in 2020-2021.
Calder Bridge is a small village in Cumbria in England. It is located between the hamlets of Gosforth and Beckermet and lies on the River Calder.
Jean McSorley is long-standing anti-nuclear campaigner, who formed the group "Cumbrians Against a Radioactive Environment" (Core) from her home town of Barrow-in-Furness, England in protest at the local Sellafield plant. As well as fighting compensation cases for Sellafield workers, Core took part in direct action campaigns. It has been incorrectly reported that they earned a string of injunctions.[1] Neither CORE as a group, nor the individuals involved, have received injunctions; but Greenpeace – who Jean McSorley subsequently worked for - has been served with a number due to its actions against nuclear operations.
Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves is a non-fiction book by Adam Hochschild that was first published by Houghton Mifflin on January 7, 2005. The book is a narrative history of the late 18th- and early 19th-century anti-slavery movement in the British Empire. The story centers around a group of British abolitionist campaigners and traces their campaign from its beginnings with Somerset v Stewart in 1772 until full emancipation for all British slaves was legally granted in 1838. The book looks at the setbacks the abolitionists faced as well as the campaign tactics they used, and explains how they were ultimately able to end the practice of slavery in Britain.
A mother country is a person's homeland.
Dorothy Anne Gradden OBE is a British Nuclear Engineer for Sellafield Ltd. She leads the projects to decommission the large "legacy" ponds. These are nationally important projects as part of country's nuclear clean up operation on "Britain’s biggest and most hazardous nuclear waste site". In 2017 she was given an OBE and in 2019 the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority recognised her as a role model in their Safety and Wellbeing Awards.
