18 Dec (NucNet): Professional services company Babcock has won a 10-year contract to supply nuclear decommissioning site Sellafield with specialist handling and containment systems to process nuclear material. The London-headquartered company said on 18 December 2017 that its subsidiary, Cavendish Nuclear, had been awarded the deal, which is worth £95m (€107m, $127m) over the first three years. Cavendish Nuclear will design, manufacture and test glove box systems in two new plants which will treat and manage nuclear materials. Glove boxes are sealed containers designed so objects can be manipulated in an enclosed atmosphere. Babcock said that virtual reality simulation would play a key part in delivering the contract. “Once the preliminary design is complete, full-scale mock-ups with virtual reality headsets will allow the customer to test out the ergonomics and identify any modifications at the earliest possible stage,” it said in a statement. Cavendish Nuclear will use Babcock’s Rosyth Dockyard in Scotland, which is one of the UK’s largest manufacturing facilities, for the project. The Sellafield site, in Cumbria, northwest England, comprises of a range of nuclear facilities, including redundant facilities associated with early defence work, operating facilities associated with the Magnox reprocessing programme, the thermal oxide reprocessing plant (Thorp), the Sellafield mixed oxide fuel plant and a range of waste treatment plants.
