Sellafield Ltd. has tentatively selected a consortium of Areva, Mace and Atkins to clean up a facility that stores legacy waste from the country's civilian nuclear fuel production.
The Sellafield site's swarf storage silos contain magnesium shavings produced during the decanning of used Magnox fuel that was then reprocessed. The site accepted waste from 1964 into the early 1990s in 22 water-filled silos equipped with systems to handle hydrogen production from the material, according to Sellafield Ltd. Much of the swarf was removed in the 1990s.
The consortium was selected to head the Silos Direct Encapsulation project, which will process swarf waste from one of the oldest silos and package it for long-term storage. According to a Sellafield release Monday, the contract will require approval from the UK's Nuclear Decommissioning Authority before it is finalized. The tender for the contract had an estimated value of $2.34 billion.