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Rescue submarine technology helps engineers save years on Sellafield clean-up
British Nuclear Group has used rescue submarine technology, of the same type that freed seven Russian sailors from the bottom of the sea earlier this year, to take a huge step toward wiping up to seven years off its Sellafield clean-up schedule.
The submersible remotely operated vehicle (ROV) negotiated heavily alkaline waters and very poor visibility to survey the contents of a Magnox fuel storage pond, enabling engineers this week to reach a clean-up milestone by retrieving the first fuel for storage at Sellafield’s Fuel Handling Plant for 15 years.
Some ROV operators from supplier and contractor James Fisher Rumic Ltd who worked on other projects at Sellafield, flew to the Kamchatka Peninsula in August this year to take part in the rescue mission of the stricken Russian submarine that was caught in fishing nets 190m below the surface.
After completing the storage pond survey, retrieval engineers were able to create a new method to accelerate the retrieval, reprocessing and safe storage of Magnox fuel rods, the first stage of which was successfully piloted this week.
Tony Price, British Nuclear Group’s Director of Clean-up, said: “The success of this pilot represents a major step towards delivering one of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority’s primary objectives, which is to accelerate hazard reduction in Sellafield’s Magnox cooling ponds.
“The focus of this project is to use existing facilities and technologies to handle historic waste. If the remainder of the pilot is as successful and the process can be scaled up, it will help secure significant cost savings for the UK taxpayer and will help fulfil the responsibility that lies with our generation, which is to deal with the historic waste legacy safely and efficiently.”
The Magnox fuel storage pond was commissioned in 1958 and received its last batch of fuel in 1992.
