nuclear-news

Your move: Gamers join nuke industry in planning future atomic disasters

 NFLA 1st April 2025

Following a £2.8 million investment made by Sellafield to transform a Whitehaven furniture department store into a high-tech digital and gaming hub[i], today nuclear industry bosses have announced that they are teaming up with Digital Gaming Content PHD students to embrace a new gaming genre – Atomic Disaster Gaming.

Under Project ‘Atomquake’, the students will be invited to participate in multiple team scenarios in which unprecedented catastrophes will be mapped out which place Cumbria’s population and environment in grave peril.

One such scenario relates to the possible location of a Geological Disposal Facility in West Cumbria in which the work of multiple giant boring machines tunnelling mass voids under the sea alongside the Sellafield site trigger earthquakes along the long-dormant Lake District Boundary Fault Zone.

Another envisages the ongoing leaks from Magnox silos contributing to the liquification of the Sellafield site.

Frightening stuff, and in parts true.

But if you were questioning the entire veracity of our story, you would be right to do so – please take account of the date.

In outlining this tale, we tip our hat to acknowledge software developers, Rebellion Developments, who have just released ‘Atomfall’, an acclaimed action game set in an alternate 1960s Cumbria, where radiation from the 1957 Windscale Fire has blanketed much of Northern England making it a contaminated quarantine zone. In the game, participants in the online world take on player characters who are engaged in a battle for survival.

The disaster outlined in ‘Atomfall’ almost came to pass, so, as life sometime imitates art, who is to say whether, in whole or in part, our innocent April Fool’s Day tale may one day also become our future reality.

(The NFLAs wish to thank Marianne Birkby from Radiation Free Lakeland for her contribution to this article and for the illustration she has kindly provided to accompany it)………………………………………………….https://www.nuclearpolicy.info/news/your-move-gamers-join-nuke-industry-in-planning-future-atomic-disasters/

April 3, 2025 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | culture and arts, UK