Sellafield Ltd is seeking to place a contract for the completion of engineering design, procurement, construction, inactive commissioning and support to active commissioning of the SDP facility.

Sellafield Ltd is responsible for safely delivering decommissioning, reprocessing and nuclear waste management activities on behalf of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority. The safe decommissioning of redundant nuclear facilities is an essential aspect of the UK's civil nuclear programme and the Sellafield site has a number of challenging programmes and projects that Sellafield Ltd must deliver to realise Sellafield's Lifetime Plan.

One of these projects relates to the Silos Direct Encapsulation Plant (SDP). The SDP Project is an integral part of the waste retrieval hazard reduction programme for the Magnox Swarf Storage Silo (MSSS), which is of strategic importance to the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA). SDP is a large and technically complex treatment plant that will receive packages of waste from the MSSS and will immobilise and condition the waste by combining with cementitious material to give an un-reactive and contained product suitable for interim storage within existing Sellafield stores.

This process will significantly reduce the hazard posed by the MSSS material in its 'raw' state. The scope of the SDP project is based around re-use of an extension to an existing site facility initially constructed to house a plant intended to provide the same risk and hazard reduction to the MSSS waste.

Sellafield Ltd wishes to appoint a contractor (possibly in a consortium with others) to deliver a fully functioning SDP Facility capable of meeting the requirements of the anticipated performance specification.

Further details of the Project can be found in the Memorandum of Information within the pre-qualification questionnaire instructions. Documents will be available from Wednesday 29.8.2012.