The U.K. Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) last week transferred the first batch of radioactive sludge from the Pile Fuel Storage Pond at the Sellafield site as part of a £100 million ($123.8 million) sludge removal effort.
In its announcement Wednesday, NDA said the sludge was transferred in a 500-liter drum to an encapsulation plant, where it will be grouted, processed, and prepared for final disposal at the U.K.’s planned geologic nuclear waste disposal facility. The Pile Fuel Storage Pond is one of four legacy ponds and silos at Sellafield, where the U.K. is in the midst of a 100-year, 55-building decommissioning project that has an estimated cleanup cost of £70 billion ($86.7 billion). It is one of Europe’s largest nuclear sites.
The Pile Fuel Storage Pond housed nuclear fuel from early atomic weapons production in the U.K. The sludge, which is an unplanned byproduct of decaying nuclear fuel, algae, and debris, represents about a third of the radioactive material left in the pond. The sludge is pumped from the pond into an adjacent treatment plant and then moved to a drum-filling plant. According to the NDA, the £100 million ($123.8 million) project is 10 years ahead of schedule at half the anticipated cost.
“This is one of the first examples of a legacy facility producing a waste ready for a geological disposal facility – it’s a cradle-to-grave solution,” Dorothy Gradden, legacy ponds chief for site operator Sellafield Ltd., said in a statement. “With the start earlier this year of bulk fuel and sludge removal from our other legacy pond, we’re now firing on all cylinders in reducing the hazard and risk in these legacy facilities and making them safer places.”
