A man feeds the birds in snow-covered Pavilion Gardens in Buxton yesterday.

Agencies/London

Heavy snow and flooding caused widespread disruption across the UK yesterday. Britain’s transport network, both rail and road, were affected by the extreme weather.

More than 1,000 schools stayed shut.

In Northern Ireland, an estimated 60,000 homes and businesses have been left without power after the region was battered by sleet and storm force winds.

Motorists have been advised of treacherous driving conditions up and down the country, with the AA warning even short journeys could be difficult.

Leeds Bradford International Airport suspended all flights yesterday morning due to ‘adverse weather conditions’.

The airport told passengers: “We advise you to contact your airline or tour operator and check the status of your flight before arriving at the airport.”

Meanwhile the Environment Agency has 18 flood alerts in place along the south west coast warning of flooding, with a further 80 alerts issued to areas at risk.

Nuclear site Sellafield closed as a precaution yesterday due to the bad weather, its operator said in a statement.

Staff were being sent home from the reprocessing and waste storage facility but there was no evidence of any safety issues, it said.

“In response to the current and predicted adverse weather conditions on and round the Sellafield site, as a precaution, a site incident has been declared and the plants have been moved safely to a controlled, shut down state,” it said.

Sellafield added: “We have implemented a phased, early release of staff from the site; this is being carried out in a safe, controlled manner. There is no reason to believe that there will be any off-site nuclear, environmental or conventional safety issues associated with the incident.”

The Met Office said the county of Cumbria where Sellafield is located was suffering a barrage of exceptionally bad spring weather.

Sellafield was home to the world’s first commercial nuclear power station, but it stopped generating electricity in 2003. The site is currently used for the reprocessing of spent fuel and nuclear waste storage.

Britain’s worst ever nuclear accident happened at the site, then known as Windscale, in 1957. A fire in a nuclear reactor used for weapons production at Windscale released large amounts of radioactive material into the air. It was one of only two accidents ever rated five out of seven on the International Nuclear Events Scale (INES), along with the Three Mile Island partial meltdown in Pennsylvania in 1979.


 

 

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