Dounreay shaft and silo clean-up contract awarded

Dounreay has awarded an important waste clean-up contract to Jacobs engineering group as the site plans for the future of its legacy radioactive waste.

Jacobs and its supporting partners have been awarded a six-year contract to provide a design management team to produce a fully integrated design for the shaft and silo project. This includes helping with the management of several design and build work packages.

The team will play a key role in coordinating the programme to clear and treat the radioactive waste in the shaft and silo, and will subcontract work to companies working in the local area – beginning with Berkshire Engineering, in Bower, which will be assisting with test and trials work.

Radioactive waste was historically consigned to the 65-metre-deep shaft and the silo, an underground waste storage vault, over several decades starting in the late 1950s. Now the higher-activity waste must be retrieved and repackaged, suitable for long-term storage in a safe modern facility.

David Hubbard, programme delivery director at Dounreay Site Restoration Limited (DSRL), said: “The shaft and silo are the historic intermediate-level waste stores at Dounreay that must be emptied, and the waste repackaged for long-term storage, before the site can be closed."

DSRL is the site licence company responsible for the clean-up and demolition of Britain’s former centre of fast reactor research and development. A wholly owned subsidiary of the Cavendish Dounreay Partnership, it is funded by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority to deliver the site closure programme.

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