Waste Management
Waste management activities across the Sellafield site involve the treatment, processing, disposal and storage of historic legacy materials as well as current wastes arisings from our commercial and decommissioning operations.
Nuclear waste falls into three categories: high, intermediate and low. Each category contains varying quantities of radioactive material and is consequently managed in different ways.
High-level waste (HLW) is the most radioactive form of nuclear waste and is produced when spent fuel has been reprocessed through the Magnox and Thorp facilities. At Sellafield, we treat this waste through a process called vitrification. This involves converting the high-level liquid waste into a solid form, reducing the volume of the liquid waste to one third of its original size. Vitrifying the waste enables the material to be stored safely and in preparation for eventual transport and permanent long term storage.
Intermediate-level waste (ILW) comprises of materials such as fuel element cladding, contaminated equipment, radioactive sludge and plutonium contaminated material (PCM) that arises from both historic and current operations. At Sellafield ILW is put into stainless steel drums, which are then filled with cement grouting before being placed into a special aboveground storage facility on the site.
Low-level waste (LLW) is only slightly radioactive and includes items such as protective clothing, laboratory equipment, paper towels and gloves which have been used in the controlled areas of a nuclear site, hospital or nuclear research centres. LLW is treated at Sellafield’s Waste Monitoring and Compaction Plant – where it is compacted, placed inside an ISO-freight container and transported for disposal at the UK’s low level waste repository, near the village of Drigg in West Cumbria.
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Waste Management Updates
Data collection in the spotlight for Low Level Waste
A reduction of up to £2.4 billion over the decommissioning lifetimes of nuclear sites could be one of the many benefits from increased levels of recycling, combustion, super-compaction and other measures for dealing with radioactive low level waste (LLW), a recent meeting was told.
