Northern companies don’t waste any time making Sellafield containers

Firms from Yorkshire, Lancashire and Cumbria are building boxes to store radioactive materials from the site

A group of companies from Yorkshire, Lancashire and Cumbria have begun manufacturing hundreds of heavy-duty containers to store Sellafield’s radioactive waste.

The 33-tonne ‘self-shielded’ metal boxes will be used to store hazardous material from the nuclear decommissioning project’s 66-year old Magnox Storage Pond, which has been prioritised for clean-up by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority.

The removal work requires the manufacture of hundreds of boxes to store material taken out of the facility – in total, they could be worth up to £100 million.

Dorothy Gradden, Head of Legacy Ponds at Sellafield, said: “The arrival of the waste boxes on site will be another landmark in cleaning up the most hazardous facilities on the Sellafield site.

“This is the Northern Powerhouse in action – a chain of manufacturing specialists, some of whom are delivering products for the nuclear industry for the first time, are stepping up and helping us achieve one of the most important projects in decommissioning the UK’s civil nuclear legacy.”

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