Thorp was one of the largest construction projects of its day, ranking alongside the Channel Tunnel and Disneyland Paris in sheer scale and ambition.
Thousands of workers descended onto Cumbria to help tackle some of the most unique engineering challenges in the world.
Thorp: The largest construction project of the eighties
At a third of a mile long, the cabling inside it could stretch from Whitehaven to Warsaw and parts of it were built knowing people would never be able to go back to those areas while it was operating as a reprocessing plant.
Thorp changed communities, changed Sellafield and changed the face of the world’s nuclear industry.