Remediating Sellafield: A New Focus for the Site

The structure of the ownership and management of nuclear liabilities on civil sites in the United Kingdom is undergoing fundamental change. The UK Government will take responsibility for the liabilities on the UKAEA, BNFL Sellafield and Capenhurst sites and the Magnox Generation sites. When fully implemented the accountability for long term strategy will rest with the new Government Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA), and contracts will be placed on M&O contractors to manage the site and implement the liabilities discharge plans. At Sellafield whilst the commercial reprocessing and MOX contracts continue, it is clear that the overall focus of the site has changed to remediation. Until the NDA is established the task of undertaking the planning is the responsibility of BNFL. To address this task the Site Remediation Team has been established. The production of the Sellafield Lifecycle Baseline Plan requires the existing long term decommissioning and waste management plans (primarily produced for provisioning purposes) together with several other specific strategies to be combined and developed into a co-ordinated and optimised plan for the remediation of the Sellafield Site, recognising the ongoing reprocessing, MOX manufacture and long term fuel storage activities. An important principle within the plan is to achieve early hazard reduction whilst demonstrating value for money. The paper will address the scale of the remediation challenge and the process being followed to develop the necessary strategy. The paper will appeal to those involved in managing remediation of large, complex and interdependent nuclear sites.