Sellafield Ltd has awarded Bechtel Cavendish Nuclear Solutions (BCNS) a two-year contract extension and added work to the Pile Fuel Cladding Silo (PFCS) project at the UK’s Sellafield Site in northern England.

The team has been on the project since 2012, designing and installing access doors and remote-handling equipment to retrieve decades-old nuclear waste from sealed compartments in a building described as one of Europe’s most hazardous.

The waste consists of 3,200 cubic meters of radioactive cladding – pieces of metal tubes used for uranium fuel rods in some of the UK’s earliest nuclear reactors. The mission of the PFCS project is to deliver a system that allows Sellafield to retrieve the waste, package it safely, and dispose of it permanently.