Remote handling company, Oxford Technologies Ltd has been awarded a £4.3 million ($7 million) contract by Dounreay Site Restoration Ltd (DSRL) to design, build, install and commission a remotely controlled Intervention Platform which will facilitate the retrieval of waste from the Dounreay Shaft and Stub tunnel complex.
The major project to decommission the shaft includes recovery and packaging of over 1500 tonnes of radioactive waste from Britain's post research programme. The shaft is 65-metres deep and comes together with an 18-metre long horizontal tunnel that was originally built to support construction of a fluid waste disposal facility.
The contract is significant for the Oxford Technologies, an SME that has traditionally supplied remote handling solutions for nuclear fusion and high energy physics applications.
"We are well known and well established in our core market, but this gives us an important opportunity to demonstrate that we can transfer our competences and provide the UK nuclear decommissioning sector with a very attractive alternative to the large traditional companies," said Dr Alan Rolfe, Managing Director at Oxford Technologies.
For more information on the shaft/silo project click here for a previous feature.
Photo: The Dounreay shaft (Source: DRSL)
