The United Kingdom’s Sellafield site for the first time has moved sludge from one of its two legacy fuel storage ponds into an interim holding site, the nuclear facility’s operator said Tuesday.
Sellafield Ltd. in mid-December moved the first batch of sludge from the Pile Fuel Storage Pond to its encapsulation plant. The material there is mixed with cement in a process called grouting. A cement cap is then placed on the container, followed by a lid, and the drum is transported to an interim storage facility.
The first container is now in storage, Sellafield encapsulation plant head Eric Bowe said in the release.
The sludge will ultimately be placed in a U.K. geologic repository for nuclear waste, which remains in the planning stages without a selected location.
The 100-meter Pile Fuel Storage Pond operated for 65 years, initially used for storage of nuclear fuel employed in production of nuclear weapons. The sludge formed in the pond by the mixture of deteriorating nuclear fuel, algae, and additional debris.
The sludge removal project is expected to cost about 100 million pounds ($124 million), which Sellafield spokeswoman Ruth Hutchison said Tuesday would cover the retrieval operations and two sludge processing facilities – the Local Sludge Treatment Plant and the Drum Filling Plant. The encapsulation plant is a separate expense, Hutchison said.
Removal of sludge from the Pile Fuel Storage Pond, along with the site’s legacy First Generation Magnox Storage Pond, is expected to be completed by 2022. It is part of the larger decommissioning of both ponds, as well as the 100-year, £70 billion ($87 billion) cleanup of the entirety of Sellafield.
