What is the Silo Maintenance Facility at Sellafield?
It’s a building that we’ll use to maintain the equipment we need to take waste out of 2 of our highest hazard facilities.
The Silo Maintenance Facility on the Sellafield site
The challenge
One of our biggest challenges at Sellafield is the need to take waste out of our legacy ponds and silos.
These buildings are our most hazardous nuclear facilities at Sellafield and weren’t designed with decommissioning in mind.
We’ve built equipment that we can use to reach inside the 2 legacy silos (the Magnox Swarf Storage Silo and the Pile Fuel Cladding Silo), grabbing the waste and putting it into high integrity storage containers.
This retrieval work will take 25 to 30 years to complete.
So, we needed a facility on the Sellafield site where we could maintain the retrievals equipment and the transport flasks that will take full containers of waste from the 2 silos to modern storage facilities.
The solution
The solution was to build a new facility – the Silo Maintenance Facility.
Built on the footprint where 2 of the iconic Calder Hall cooling towers used to stand, the facility took almost 8 years to build, with active operations starting in February 2023.
The facility gives us:
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road receipt and despatch of tools and equipment
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clean storage and the ability to receive and export transport flasks
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flask inspections
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tool loading and unloading for the silo emptying machines used in the Magnox Swarf Storage Silos
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waste and tool package maintenance for the Magnox Swarf Storage Silos
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radiological equipment maintenance workshop
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clean room workshop
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accommodation and plant access for health physics, shift teams, management, and retrievals operators
The Silo Maintenance Facility under construction
Inside the finished Silo Maintenance Facility
| Benefits: | Maintaining the equipment we need to empty the legacy waste silos |
| Status: | Active operations February 2023 |
| Collaboration: | The Silo Maintenance Facility was delivered by Balfour Beatty and Cavendish Nuclear |
Timeline
| Site clearance | Started 2011 |
| Construction | Completed 2018 |
| Installation of plant equipment | Completed 2019 |
| Commissioned | 2020 to 2022 |
| Active operations | February 2023 |
Facts
The facility will:
- manage and maintain an initial fleet of 22 internal transport packages.
- provide an import route for waste containers into Pile Fuel Cladding Silo environmental boxes
- store spare components for the Silo Emptying Plant machines for the Magnox Swarf Storage Silo
- provide storage for Silo Emptying Plant machine maintenance flasks.
- provide a disposal route into intermediate level waste streams for failed machinery components
Construction facts
- over 21,000 tonnes of concrete were used in the construction of the facility
- over 4,000 metres of pipework was laid as part of the construction – that’s over 2.5 miles worth
- the facility will use 11 internal cranes to carry out maintenance work
- over 8,000 metres of cables were installed – that’s enough to go round the Sellafield site perimeter 13 times