Sellafield Ltd. has agreed to a collaborative agreement with the National Nuclear Laboratory (NNL) for the £70 billion ($86.7 billion) decommissioning of the United Kingdom’s Sellafield site, the companies announced Wednesday.
The two partners will focus on reducing hazards at the U.K.’s most complex nuclear waste site through technical research and development. The 55-building decommissioning project is expected to take 100 years.
Past examples of collaboration between Sellafield and NNL include the development of industrial robots for the site’s waste stores and research on management of intermediate-level waste. NNL serves as an independent consultant for the U.K. and international nuclear industry, with a focus on reducing the cost of cleanup and decommissioning.
Sellafield Ltd. Chairman Tony Fountain signed the agreement with NNL Chairman Andrew Mathews. The two sides, according to the announcement, have conducted research for managing intermediate-level waste, which Sellafield says will reduce the site’s cleanup cost by hundreds of millions of pounds.
“To be successful the futures of Sellafield Ltd and NNL are inextricably linked,” Sellafield Ltd. Technical Director Rebecca Weston said in a statement. “The history, knowledge and experience shared by the respective technical teams reinforce these links. It is therefore important to recognise this in the formal relationship between the organisations.”
NNL Managing Director Paul Howarth said in his statement: “Sellafield Ltd has always accounted for the largest portion of our work, and around half of our workforce – and our biggest nuclear laboratories – are based on the Sellafield site. Within NNL we have a good deal of science, technology and innovation which can help to reduce the cost and timescales of the clean-up mission whilst improving safety. I am confident that we will see even more success ahead for both organisations – and for the UK’s nuclear sector as a whole – over the coming years.”
