The Silos Maintenance Facility – Sellafield’s ‘Formula 1 Pit Lane’
The Silos Maintenance Facility (SMF) has been affectionately referred to as the ‘Formula 1 Pit Lane’ for Sellafield, given the role the facility and its teams will play in supporting the remediation and decommissioning activities at the west Cumbria site.
Located adjacent to the Calder Hall power station and its Magnox reactors, the SMF is a fundamentally important facility. Essentially, the SMF is a purpose-built workshop where the equipment used to empty the two most hazardous silos – Magnox Swarf Storage Silo (MSSS) and the Pile Fuel Cladding Silo (PFCS), both priorities for the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority – is maintained and stored.
At a cost of £250 million and taking nine years to complete, the project has been hailed a resounding success by collaboration partners Cavendish Nuclear and Balfour Beatty, along with client and co-collaborators Sellafield Ltd.
Highly dependent upon the ability of personnel from the three partners to work cohesively, the SMF project was completed on budget, to the agreed timescale and also able to boast an impressive safety record throughout.
Keith Longney, Founder of Acorn Coaching & Development: “Acorn have extensive experience of working on a number of nuclear sites including Sellafield. The senior lead team, who we had worked with previously, brought us in to support the three collaboration partners in 2013 at a stage in the project where construction was commencing in earnest.”