The decommissioning programme at the UK’s Sellafield nuclear site has been ranked alongside building the Channel Tunnel between England and France in terms of scale and organisational complexity.
To respond to this challenge, site licence company Sellafield Ltd inaugurated the Programme and Project Partnership (PPP), an alliance between itself and four suppliers based on long-term relationships to deliver the highest standards of programme management together with a more innovative approach to engineering design and project delivery.
Over a period of 20 years, PPP will be responsible for delivering a £7.5bn engineering and construction programme, comprising a series of major projects each costing hundreds of millions of pounds. All are vital to the 100-year programme to decommission Sellafield, which is home to the world’s largest store of civil plutonium.
PPP’s role is to help to deliver infrastructure to the Sellafield site as quickly and safely as possible, by creating new facilities that allow Sellafield to treat, manage and store waste safely for decades to come.
As engineering design partner, Amentum is at the forefront of making this happen. By blending nuclear experienced engineers with those from other industries, we are finding innovative solutions and often delivering them with commercial off-the-shelf equipment rather than expensive, bespoke solutions which have typically been resorted to in the past.
One of the first project to come under PPP’s wing was the SIXEP Continuity Plant (SCP), which will ensure that Sellafield Ltd site’s existing Site Ion Exchange Effluent Plant (SIXEP) facility, which has been operational since 1985, can continue its vital work for decades to come.
Major milestones achieved so far on SCP include:
- Detailed design gate passed with the SIXEP Continuity Plant described as best in class amongst other major projects on the Sellafield site
- Final business case approved by the HM Treasury three months ahead of schedule
- Foundation for Process and Services Building completed ahead of schedule.
PPP’s track record of achievement so far makes it one of the most effective infrastructure delivery partnerships in the UK.
Also at Sellafield, Amentum is part of a joint venture delivering the Box Encapsulation Plant, a £600m facility where remotely operated robots will fill and grout steel boxes of beta and gamma waste retrieved from storage ponds dating back to the earliest days of the nuclear industry.