St John, Beckermet

Beckermet is a village and civil parish in Cumbria, England, between Egremont and Seascale. The parish had a population of 1,619 in the 2011 census. Historically in Cumberland, it is served by Braystones railway station and is less than a mile west of the A595 road. It is around 2 miles (3 km) from the Sellafield nuclear plant which may be seen from the higher parts of the village.

Beckermet railway station is a disused rail station located in the village of Beckermet in Cumbria. Tracks were laid southwards from Whitehaven and Moor Row as far as Egremont by the Whitehaven, Cleator and Egremont Railway, opening to passengers on 1 July 1857. By the 1860s, the Whitehaven, Cleator and Egremont Railway company sought to extend southwards from Egremont to meet the coastal line at Sellafield, aiming for Millom, Barrow-in-Furness and beyond. The Whitehaven and Furness Junction Railway company opposed this, so the two companies came to an accommodation and built the Egremont to Sellafield extension as a joint line. Beckermet was the sole intermediate passenger station on the extension. The station was on the western edge of the village in Cumbria, England.

The River Ehen is a river in Cumbria, England. The river's source is at the west end of Ennerdale Water: it runs west through Ennerdale Bridge where it is joined by Croasdale Beck (flowing from Banna Fell). Ennerdale Water itself is fed by the River Liza. The Ehen continues past Cleator Moor and Cleator, where it is fed by the River Keekle, moving southwards through Egremont and eventually running parallel to the Irish Sea which it eventually joins at Sellafield at the same point as the River Calder.

Moorside nuclear power station is proposed for a site near Sellafield, in Cumbria, England. The original plan by NuGeneration, a British subsidiary of Toshiba-owned Westinghouse Electric Company, had the station coming online from 2024 with 3.4 GW of new nuclear capacity, from three AP1000 reactors. Work up to 2018 would include acquiring the site licence, the development consent order, and other required permits and permissions to start work. Site preparation was to take two years, up to 2020. Following the Chapter 11 bankruptcy of Westinghouse in March 2017, the project was put under review. From December 2017 to July 2018 Kepco was named as preferred bidder. Kepco were thought to prefer their own APR-1400 reactor design for the site, a design which had not yet gone through generic design assessment with the UK's Office for Nuclear Regulation. On 8 November 2018, it was announced that Toshiba's plans for the new nuclear power station had been scrapped and its subsidiary company, NuGen, would be wound up. The Moorside site was handed back to the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, and the government issued a statement reaffirming its commitment to new nuclear. In July 2020, a EDF-led Moorside consortium announced a proposal for two EPR reactors yielding 3,200 MWe of new nuclear capacity. A second Rolls-Royce-led UK SMR consortium plans a low-carbon power station around a small light-water reactor and the possibility of a link with renewable technologies, storage systems and hydrogen production named Moorside clean energy hub.

Moorside clean energy hub is a proposal put forward on 30 June 2020 by two consortia, one led by EDF and the other by Rolls-Royce, to create an energy hub that would produce electricity and hydrogen through the use of nuclear power and renewable energy. The hub would be constructed on the cancelled Moorside nuclear power station site, which was abandoned by Toshiba in 2018.

Blackbeck is a small village in Cumbria, England. It is northeast of Beckermet and Sellafield, along the A595 road. It contains properties such as the Blackbeck Inn, Blackbeck Farm and Brow House.

Beckermet Mines railway station was situated at Pit No.1 of the mine of the same name. It was used by workmen's trains which travelled along a branch which curved eastwards off the Moor Row to Sellafield line, primarily to handle the iron ore lifted at the site.The mine was opened in 1903 in open country west of the hamlet of Haile, Cumbria, England. The site's surroundings remained rural in 2013.

Thornhill is a village in the county of Cumbria, England, south of Whitehaven and north of Seascale, close to St. Bees, and only a few miles from the Irish Sea. The village was created by Whitehaven Rural District Council and Egremont Urban District Council in the 1920s, as part of the national campaign to improve housing conditions, keeping a promise made by the Government to soldiers fighting the First World War. Tenants moved into the first completed houses, on Thorny Road, late in 1921. Thornhill is within the ancient parish of St John Beckermet, and Thornhill Mission is an Anglican Church under the Benefice of Beckermet, created so that parishioners would not have to travel to Beckermet to attend church. In April 2010 The Parishes of St. John's Beckermet and St. Bridgets Beckermet were reorganised to bring both Beckermet and Thornhill into the same parish. This was Beckermet Parish Council, which was renamed in June 2012 to Beckermet with Thornhill Parish Council. The village is home to a small shop with sub Post Office, and a social club. Thornhill Primary School is also located in the centre of the village. The centre of the village also houses a community park and play area. There is also a parish council owned football pitch, with changing rooms, which are used by Thornhill Football Club.

Haile Parish Church is near Haile, Cumbria, England. It is an active Anglican parish church in the deanery of Calder, and the diocese of Carlisle. Its benefice is Egremont with Bigrigg & Haile. The church is a grade 2 listed building.

The Windscale fire of 10 October 1957 was the worst nuclear accident in the United Kingdom's history, ranked in severity at level 5 out of 7 on the International Nuclear Event Scale. The fire was in Unit 1 of the two-pile Windscale site (now Sellafield) on the north-west coast of England in Cumberland. The two graphite-moderated reactors, referred to at the time as "piles", had been built as part of the British post-war atomic bomb project. Windscale Pile No. 1 was operational in October 1950, followed by Pile No. 2 in June 1951. The fire burned for three days and released radioactive fallout which spread across the UK and the rest of Europe. The radioactive isotope iodine-131, which may lead to cancer of the thyroid, was of particular concern at the time. It has since come to light that small but significant amounts of the highly dangerous radioactive isotope polonium-210 were also released. Calculations based on the amount of radiation released estimate that the accident may have caused 190 cases of cancer, with around 100 of these being fatal, however recent epidemiological studies failed to find any such increase. At the time of the incident, no one was evacuated from the surrounding area, but milk from about 500 km2 (190 square miles) of the nearby countryside was destroyed for about a month afterward due to concerns about it being contaminated with iodine-131. The UK government played down the events at the time, and reports on the fire were subject to heavy censorship, as Prime Minister Harold Macmillan feared the incident would harm British–American nuclear relations. The event was not an isolated incident; there had been a series of radioactive discharges from the piles in the years leading up to the accident. In early 1957, there had been a leak of radioactive material in which strontium-90 was released into the environment. Like the later fire, this incident was covered up by the British government. Later studies on the release of radioactive material due to the Windscale fire revealed that much of the contamination had resulted from such radiation leaks before the fire. A 2010 study of workers involved in the cleanup of the accident found no significant long-term health effects from their involvement.

The Windscale Piles were two air-cooled graphite-moderated nuclear reactors on the Windscale nuclear site in Cumberland (now known as Sellafield site, Cumbria) on the north-west coast of England. The two reactors, referred to at the time as "piles", were built as part of the British post-war atomic bomb project and produced weapons-grade plutonium for use in nuclear weapons. Windscale Pile No. 1 became operational in October 1950 followed by Pile No. 2 in June 1951. They were intended to last five years, but operated for seven until shut down following the Windscale fire on 10 October 1957. Nuclear decommissioning operations commenced in the 1980s and are estimated to last beyond 2040. Visible changes have been seen as the chimneys were slowly dismantled from top-down; Pile 2's chimney being reduced to the height of adjacent buildings in the early 2000s. However, the demolition of pile 1 chimney has taken much longer as it was significantly contaminated after the 1957 fire. The reactor cores still remain to be dismantled.

Braystones is a railway station on the Cumbrian Coast line, which runs between Carlisle and Barrow-in-Furness. The station, situated 37 miles (60 km) north-west of Barrow-in-Furness, serves the villages of Beckermet and Braystones in Cumbria. It is owned by Network Rail and managed by Northern Trains. The station is an unstaffed request stop. It is situated directly on the coast in a remote location. Pearson's 1992 railway guide is moved to comment, "The tiny halts at Braystones and Nethertown are as remote as anything British Rail has to offer...".