The treatment and management of radioactive wastes at BNFL Sellafield, England

British Nuclear Fuels pie (BNFL) owns and operates the United Kingdom's nuclear fuel reprocessing facility at Sellafield on the West coast of England. This paper gives a brief overview of the site which retains a legacy of first and second generation nuclear plants which dating back almost fifty years. A number have been refurbished and others taken out of service, retaining some of their nuclear fuel and material inventory, with resultant waste management requirements. As a consequence over the past 7 years the site has more than doubled in size with much of the expansion designed to deal with waste management. A total site strategy was developed, which included an integrated waste management plan which needed both customer and regulatory approval To facilitate implementation of that strategy, a programme of refurbishment, decontamination, decommissioning, demolition and reutilization was undertaken to accommodate a multi billion dollar investment programme in bespoke liquid and solid waste treatment facilities. During their construction Sellafield was one of Europe's largest construction sites and had construction work being carried out a few hundred yards away nuclear plant operations. The new waste management facilities are now commissioned and operating successfully to treat current and historic waste arisings. The design through to successful operation of so many plants over a 10 year period is a major achievement, particularly when site reprocessing operations and nuclear power generation continued throughout the construction period. This programme has demonstrated the ability of BNFL to undertake and gain regulatory approval for difficult and complex new waste management tasks, whilst meeting the commercial targets set by the company and its external customers. This paper describes the varied waste arisings from the Sellafield site and the waste treatment facilities that currently operate to convert the wastes into a form suitable for long term storage and ultimate disposal on availability of a disposal site.