The UK’s Sellafield Ltd has named its preferred partners for the new Project and Asset Care Execution (PACE) framework, a major delivery partnership valued at up to £3.6bn ($4.76bn). The framework is designed to run for an initial nine years, with a six-year extension option extending through to 2041.
The critical asset care, maintenance, and construction activities at the Cumbria nuclear site have been divided into two primary divisions: Lot 1- Process & Mechanical Handling Facilities; and Lot 2 – Batch Specialist & Decommissioning Facilities
The selected partner is for Lot 1 is OneAxIoM, a strategic joint venture between Amentum Clean Energy Limited and Mitie Ltd. They are supported by supply chain partners Assystem and Mott MacDonald. This Lot is worth up to £2.1bn, focuses on Spent Fuel Management (SFM) and Retrievals East River (RER) which form the backbone of Sellafield’s mission to manage the UK’s nuclear legacy.
SFM oversees:
- Safe Storage & Effluents, managing nuclear fuel from active and retired reactors, alongside handling historic reprocessing waste; and
- Critical Treatment Facilities, ensuring the reliability of key effluent routes that reduce hazards across the site. This includes the Low Active Effluent Management Group (LAEMG), the Highly Active Liquor (HAL) programme, and the Site Ion Exchange Plant (SIXEP).
RER is a dedicated division that has been central to Sellafield’s clean-up mission for over three decades. Its focus includes:
- Waste Conditioning: safely receiving, treating, and encapsulating intermediate-level waste packages for long-term storage. The RER team recently reached a milestone of processing over 50,000 waste packages;
- Reactor Clean-Up: treating the structural remnants and waste arising from the UK’s legacy Advanced Gas-cooled Reactor (AGR) programme; and
- Silo Bridging: providing a temporary route to handle legacy silo waste until 2027 while permanent solutions for final disposal are prepared.
The selected partner for Lot 2 is Hochtief Infrastructure UK. This Lot, worth up to £1.5bn, focuses on special nuclear materials, nuclear infrastructure, remediation, and dismantling redundant Cold War-era facilities. Its scope primarily involves:
- Special Nuclear Materials: providing lifecycle asset care, monitoring, and structural support for facilities storing highly sensitive, legacy nuclear materials;
- Decommissioning & Dismantling: tearing down redundant, high-hazard facilities that have reached the end of their operational lives;
- Remediation: cleaning up land, structural contamination, and legacy storage environments across the West Cumbria site;
- Full Lifecycle Execution: delivering everything from design and procurement to final decommissioning, demolition, and project controls; and
- Off-Site Innovation: unlike standard on-site demolition, Hochtief and its partners are actively considering new off-site facilities to pre-fabricate, test, and prepare cleanup assets safely before bringing them into radiologically controlled environments.
The PACE framework succeeds the previous Design Service Alliance (DSA) and Integrated Asset Care (IAC) frameworks. The new setup intends to:
- Drive efficiency by employing common approaches across operational nuclear facilities to achieve higher value for money;
- Modernise construction by promoting off-site manufacturing, inspecting, and preparing assets before they are brought to the main site; and
- Generate social impact by aligning with Sellafield’s “Social Impact, Multiplied” (SIX) strategy to invest in local employment, apprenticeships, and maximise small-and-medium enterprise (SME) involvement in West Cumbria.
“Our mission is to create a clean, safe and secure environment for future generations. To do this we must ensure our assets remain safe, reliable and fit for the future,” said Matthew Johns, Chief Engineer, Sellafield Ltd. “The PACE agreement is an important step to strengthen our asset care capability. It will provide the expertise we need to maintain a high standard of safe and efficient delivery.”
James Riddick, Chief Commercial Officer at Sellafield Ltd said:
“The PACE framework is a major part of our overarching acquisition strategy, and a lot of work has gone into preparing for this exciting long-term partnership. We are looking forward to working together on the positive opportunities for both our mission and our community.”
