Three of six 12.4-ton stainless steel doors — which will serve as access points for waste retrievals at the Sellafield nuclear site’s Pile Fuel Cladding Silo – have arrived, the U.K. Nuclear Decommissioning Authority said Monday.
The third door arrived recently, according to the announcement, and all six silo doors are scheduled for installation by December 2016. They are expected to begin accepting waste retrievals at the start of 2020.
The silo houses waste from nuclear weapons production activities dating to the 1940s.
“This is a fantastic achievement for the team,” Pile Fuel Cladding Silo program chief Gary Snow said in the statement. “It is a significant step forward towards our mission to deliver the ‘early retrievals’ approach which is leading to a simpler, quicker, safer and more efficient way of getting the waste out of this legacy facility.”
According to a previous NDA announcement, the doors weigh as much as 150 men and stand 7 meters tall and 4 meters wide. The first door was successfully lifted into a 40-ton, 9-meter wide frame on the side of the building after arriving in early August.