Forgemasters land nuclear clean-up deal

(SFIL) has signed the first part of a ten-year, £60m deal to supply

with secure steel casks to contain its nuclear waste.

Representatives Germany’s Gessellschaft für Nuklear-Service (GNS) and SFIL met in Essen to sign the first part of the deal – worth £10m – to secure an initial production run of 24 forged steel casks to transport and store waste from reprocessed spent nuclear power station fuel elements.

The second part of the contract, providing GNS with the option of a further 24 casks, is worth £9.1m. The entire ten-year contract is to produce 150 casks.

Each cask weighs 61 tonnes and a sample cask will undergo destructive tests, carried out by the German regulatory authorities, to guarantee the integrity of the forgings.

The casks will be used to transport German nuclear waste from a nuclear processing plant operated by French company Areva, in La Hague, northern France, back into Germany for safe storage.

‘These casks are constructed using proven nuclear technology which we currently employ in the manufacture of similar casks for Areva, and this technology will also form the backbone of any future British nuclear developments,’ commented Volker Schaffer, Sales Director for Sheffield Forgemasters Engineering.