Four Decommissioning Contracts Awarded for U.K.'s Sellafield

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Written by Martin Lynch, European News Editor for Industrial Info (Galway, Ireland)--Four companies have landed 20-year contracts worth billions of pounds with Sellafield Limited for the long-term decommissioning programme at Europe's largest nuclear power complex in Sellafield on England's west coast.

The Programme and Project Partners (PPP) model has been implemented to "revolutionise project delivery at Sellafield" and reduce the costs at the nuclear fuel reprocessing and nuclear decommissioning site. The winning companies are Kellogg Brown and Root Limited (KBR) as integration partner, Wood for design and engineering, Morgan Sindall Infrastructure as civils construction management partner and Doosan Babcock Limited to oversee process construction management. The contracts form a key part of the site's 100-year decommissioning programme. Sellafield Limited is wholly owned by the U.K.'s Nuclear Decommissioning Authority. The contracts awarded to the four companies are worth a combined £4.5 billion ($5.7 billion). Initial projects will include the SPRS Retreatment Plant, SIXEP Contingency Plant and Replacement Analytical Project.

Sellafield is the largest nuclear complex in Western Europe, located on a site of two square miles with more than 1,000 buildings. Despite ongoing dismantling of old buildings, the site is a hive of construction activity with new buildings under construction to store nuclear waste. Since the 1970s reprocessing spent nuclear fuel from the U.K. and other European countries was a key activity at the site but by next year reprocessing operations will come to a halt with a shift in focus and investment into high hazard retrievals, risk reduction and broader decommissioning activities. The cost of cleaning up the Sellafield site has risen dramatically and now stands at about £121 billion ($154 billion), a figure that is almost five times higher than the estimate given back in 2010.

Paul Foster, chief executive officer for Sellafield Limited, said: "The award of the PPP contracts marks the start of a new, and very different, journey for Sellafield Limited and our supply chain partners. Our No. 1 priority is making Sellafield safer, sooner, and a key part of this is establishing closer relationships with other expert organisations. Working side by side with our four long-term partners as one team will help transform the way we deliver projects safely, quickly and cost effectively." Andy Colquhoun, chief executive officer of Doosan Babcock, commented: "[We] look forward to collaborating with Sellafield Limited and the other three partners to meet the significant decommissioning challenges which lie ahead. We have been part of the community in the Sellafield and West Cumbria area for over 60 years and look forward to expanding and developing our relationships in the community over the next 20 years and beyond."

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