Sellafield Ltd

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Capenhurst's new future

Capenhurst's vision

The development of Capenhurst's site is being progressed in line with the site's vision of Maximising Assets, Growing Our Business.

The site vision is underpinned by these aspirations:

• become and NDA flagship site
• work in partnership with Urenco UK Ltd
• become a commercial success
• continue with the highly successful Safety 1st programme
• make Capenhurst a place where people love to work
• get things done more easily
  

Delivering our vision

Enhanced funding has been announced for Sellafield Ltd to progress the development of two major projects at Capenhurst. Between them, both projects will facilitate overall hazard reduction through accelerated uranic management activities. This would result in substantial future storage cost savings and potential revenue from material disposals.

Export Capability Project – ECP will focus on two areas: first, it will ensure the entire stock of depleted uranium, currently stored safely at the site in mild steel drums, is repackaged to provide robust options for storage and possible future transport. Secondly, it will provide a new goods import/export capability and railhead on the site to minimise future road journeys at the site, both for Sellafield Ltd and potentially for the site’s other licensee, Urenco UK Ltd. This could reduce carbon dioxide emissions associated with traffic to the site by 96%.

Cylinder Handling Facility – CHF will be designed to sample, characterise and repack into transport compliant containers the entire stock of uranium hexafluoride at the site.

How we operate the site

As a business, Sellafield Ltd runs Capenhurst in a way that allows those doing the work each day to suggest improvements to either processes or safety.

Safety 1st: The management of safety at Capenhurst is undertaken by those employees on the shop floor who are the most likely to encounter serious hazards every day. The Safety 1st campaign is now in its fourth year and the site has welcomed visits from other businesses such as Airbus, Nuvia, Winfrith and Harwell nuclear sites. The site has also received top level recognition by RoSPA for the last seven years, proving the value of Safety 1st.

Workout: The Workout concept is used at Capenhurst to drive out business inefficiency and to get things done more easily. It encourages and empowers employees to act with speed, simplicity and self-confidence. The concept was created at GE is based on the principle that the people in the best position to improve a business are those doing the job everyday. The process empowers employees at all levels to devise and pitch improvement ideas direct to senior managers face-to-face for an immediate decision. The concept of Workout fits well with Capenhurst's entrepreneurial nature and ensures that an immediate positive impact is made to the site immediately. This process will continue to be used to address almost every aspect of the site's operations to ensure continuous improvement.

Facts and figures

• The Capenhurst site is split into two parts, one owned by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) and managed and operated by contractor Sellafield Ltd; the other owned and operated by Urenco UK Ltd (UUK). The UUK part of the site is an operational uranium enrichment facility and is an entirely separate legal and commercial entity.
• The NDA site is a former uranium enrichment facility, which ceased operations in 1982. Since then it has been focused on plant decommissioning, nuclear clean-up and the safe storage of uranic materials, which are by-product of recycling used fuel at Sellafield.
• The uranic materials that are stored safely at the NDA site are Magnox Depleted Uranium (MDU) and uranium hexafluoride (Hex). They are not waste products but potentially reusable forms of uranium, subject to a decision by Government to do so.
• No radioactive waste is received and stored at Capenhurst.
• Sellafield Ltd’s Capenhurst team will be the first civil nuclear site in the UK to complete its main plant decommissioning programme in 2009
• Sellafield Ltd operates the site with safety as a priority. This is controlled by the unique Safety 1st campaign, which is managed by the site’s Safety Reps. These are shop floor employees, not managers. The site has just received its fifth successive RoSPA award for safety
• Sellafield Ltd and the NDA’s primary interface with the local community and other stakeholders is through the Local Stakeholder Group, which is independently chaired and meets twice a year.
  

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