Shepley Engineers specialists have been undertaking specialist chemical reagent decontamination tasks across the Sellafield site over the past 30 years. They are recognized as the Sellafield site specialist decontamination team and they have built a reputation as the go to decontamination experts. With roots in the BNFL R&D community of the 1980’s they were responsible for the development and technology transfer of specialist chemical decontamination reagents from the Laboratory to the on plant application environment.
They developed a range of chemical reagents which were specifically designed to be compatible with the existing effluent management system of the Sellafield site, allowing them to be treated inexpensively using the existing effluent processing streams. These chemical reagents have been applied to support both the maintenance of active plant facilities and also decommissioning/refurbishment projects. On the large scale, 2m3 heated batches of chemical reagents have been pumped into plant circuits to affect decontamination.
The chemical reagents have been used to successfully decontaminate the Magnox MK1 & Mk3 evaporators and also the Thorp MASFE MK 1 evaporator at Sellafield, as part of significant refurbishment projects. Highly active solvent tanks have also been cleaned using this chemical reagent batch process. The team also provide the up-front technical justification and selection assessment process to determine; which is the best chemical reagent, for a client’s specific application.
