For the first time since a fire 50 years ago, engineers have taken a look inside the Windscale Pile 1 reactor at the Sellafield nuclear plant.
The decommissioning team looked inside the affected area with an endoscope to take pictures from the core, allowing for the removal of the remaining fuel and isotopes in the reactor pile.
In 1957 one of the two reactor piles caught fire and caused Britain's worst nuclear accident, releasing masses of radiation into the countryside.
GREENPEACE ACTIVISTS protesting against a shipment of nuclear waste on its way to Sellafield are putting themselves at risk of death or injury, the UK nuclear security chief has warned.
Roger Brunt, the director of the government's Office for Civil Nuclear Security (OCNS), has accused the international anti-nuclear group of "recklessness" during attempts to board a boat carrying plutonium-contaminated waste from Sweden.
Britain has a stockpile of plutonium and uranium that, if converted to fuel, could be worth nearly £160 billion and power three nuclear reactors for 60 years, scientists say.
The future of the stockpile - largely left over from burning fuel - will be decided by ministers over the next year, The Times has learnt. Its value is estimated as the equivalent of 2.6 billion barrels of oil.
The consortium with a £20bn contract to clean up Britain's Sellafield nuclear plant has been handed a blank cheque by the Government to pay for future accidents there.
Irish people are exposed to higher levels of radiation than previously thought, with the latest figures from the Radiological Protection Institute of Ireland (RPII) showing nine per cent greater exposure than had been recorded.
The most comprehensive study ever undertaken by the RPII has found that Irish exposure to radiation is more than one third higher than the international average and that the cancer causing gas radon is the primary source of radiation exposure in Ireland.
Top-secret consignments across Channel are halted as a result of IoS investigation
The credibility of the nuclear industry was shaken last night after the estimated cost of cleaning up Britain's atomic waste was raised by a further £10bn.
The latest clean-up estimate from the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) suggests the commonly accepted figure of £73bn should rise to £83bn. But the agency insisted that £10bn of income from generating and fuel reprocessing plants should also be taken into account.
The Washington Division of URS Corp. was picked as the preferred bidder to lead a group that will clean up and shut down the Sellafield nuclear complex in England.
Sellafield, on the coast of the Irish Sea in Cumbria in Northwest England, is a major nuclear power and reprocessing facility.
It has been revealed that it will take more than 100 years before the toxic nuclear site in Sellafield is safe.
A report from Westminster's Public Accounts Committee says the UK's largest atomic power station will not be completely clean until 2120.
The South Down SDLP MP, Eddie McGrady, described the nuclear waste as a time bomb waiting to happen. 'They are not only producing but importing the dirty stuff from the rest of the world, it is incredible,' he said.
Taxpayers are being forced to indemnify the winner of the £7.5bn contract to decommission the highly toxic Sellafield nuclear site in Cumbria against an accident because the bidders are based overseas. The preferred consortium will be announced on Friday.
Four consortia are vying for the contract, which could be worth £20bn over its lifetime, including US engineering giants Fluor, Bechtel, Washington Group and CH2M Hill, as well as French nuclear power group Areva and the Japanese firm Toshiba. UK companies Serco and Amec are also members of overseas-led consortia.
