FOR this week's nostalgia, we have looed back at the former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and her visit to Sellafield in 1985.

The former PM opened a new £400 million SIXEP plant and said she would be happy to live near Sellafield to those at the opening, much to the delight or disgust to some we could assume.

The visit from Number 10 was the last stop in a hectic tour around the nuclear industry’s biggest sites across the UK. She landed by helicopter at Sellafield before opening the huge SIXEP plant, which was designed to cut out radioactive sea discharges.

Margaret Thatcher told the 100 invited guests that day: “The real purpose of my visit today is to demonstrate faith in, and enthusiasm for, Britain’s nuclear power and fuel industry.”

During her visit, she received a bouquet from second year electrician Lesley Bode, 17, from Workington.

However, the controversial figure she was, partiucularly in the both, many demonstrators were waiting in the hopes to lobby the Prime Minister. However, there will have been much disappointment that the tight schedule kept her away from them.

The Site Ion Exchange Effluent Plant (SIXEP) which has been operational since it was opened by the PM in 1985 amd removes radioactivity from various site effluent streams on the Sellafield site. It acts as the ‘kidneys’ of the site filtering out radioactive material before discharging to sea.

In 2022, new plans were put forward, for a new facility, the SIXEP Continuity Plant (SCP), which acts an essential replacement for the dated 1985 SIXEP. 

The visit by the former Prime Minister fell directly between her time in office, from election on May 4 1979 to November 28 1990.