A major milestone has been reached in "one of the most important construction projects" at Sellafield with the delivery of two vessels at the Box Encapsulation Plant.

The plant will play a vital role in Sellafield's 100-year clean-up programme, which will take nuclear waste recovered from their original waste plants and box it up so it can be safely stored in a modern building.

The containers, manufactured by Bendalls Engineering in Carlisle, will deal with effluents generated during the process.

Sellafield Ltd's Ewan Smith, project manager, said: "This is an important milestone for the project and I'd like to congratulate everyone involved.


"These are complex vessels which will play an important role in the plant.

"They are designed to collect and sample highly active effluent so it can be safely transferred to the specialist facility that manages the material.

"Bendalls' work on the project began with a relatively simple contract to provide vessels to deal with lower activity effluent. These were completed and installed some time ago.

"During that work, we gained valuable experience that informed the delivery of the more complex, larger vessels."

The arrival of the vessels marks the end of a two year process.

They were specified by the Box Encapsulation Plant joint delivery team and Sellafield Ltd. They were then designed, manufactured, and tested by Bendalls at its Carlisle manufacturing base.

Following installation, preparatory work will begin on the associated pipework required for the system.

The plant is primarily designed to deal with waste from the Magnox Swarf Storage Silo, one of four legacy waste plants prioritised for clean-up by Sellafield Ltd's owner, the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA.)

Alongside that work, the plant will also receive certain wastes from the other three legacy waste stores: the First Generation Magnox Storage Pond, the Pile Fuel Storage Pond, and Pile Fuel Cladding Silo.

(MH/JG)