Graham to build 10m deep cap over radioactive waste site

Nuclear Waste Products and services, which manages the disposal of the UK’s low-stage radioactive raze, commissioned the crucial work on the final capping of disposal trenches and vaults vulnerable through the sixties to the gradual eighties.

Graham starts work this month on the Southern Trenches Intervening time Membrane – STIM -project with predominant works setting out in February 2025.

The final project for the mutter builds on draw, planning and preparatory work at the Drigg mutter spanning finish to a decade.

The job involves installing a protective conceal over the legacy disposal trenches up to 10m thick. This would possibly maybe presumably furthermore consist of inserting other construction affords to growth in opposition to the final cap.

Alastair Lewis, Graham contracts director acknowledged: “Right here is the largest nuclear project to this level for the alternate and can continue on from old works undertaken throughout the Low Level Waste Repository Blueprint.”

The NWS has executed the draw of the final cap, the vast enabling works and the rail transport arrangements which are an crucial for procuring, importing and emplacing thousands of tonnes of affords.

Jonathan Evans, repository mutter programmes director for NWS, acknowledged: “Putting the engineered cap over the legacy radioactive raze disposal facilities at the UK’s Low Level Waste Repository is a first of its kind exclaim for the UK.

Disposal of low stage radioactive raze at the repository began in 1959 with raze being positioned in lined trenches at the mutter, which is situated near the village of Drigg in West Cumbria.

Disposal methods evolved throughout the gradual Eighties and early 1990s, which resulted in the near of extremely engineered concrete vaults for future disposals.