Sellafield's Silo Maintenance Facility: What is it?

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:

• road receipt and despatch of tools and equipment

• clean storage and the ability to receive and export transport flasks

• flask inspections

• tool loading and unloading for the silo emptying machines used in the Magnox Swarf Storage Silos

• waste and tool package maintenance for the Magnox Swarf Storage Silos

• radiological equipment maintenance workshop

• clean room workshop

• accommodation and plant access for health physics, shift teams, management, and retrievals operators

Timeline

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

Further reading

Sellafield unveils new plant to support clean-up and help empty Sellafield's most hazardous nuclear waste stores

One thousand safe days for complex Sellafield project