Decommissioning & Remediation
Transforming legacy assets into safe places
Jacobs brings decades of experience to decommissioning and cleanup, drawn from our work at the world’s most challenging nuclear sites including Fukushima, Chernobyl and Hanford.
Given the nature of nuclear facilities, these legacy assets can't simply be switched off, demolished and removed. We tackle our client’s biggest challenges and help transform contaminated sites into safe places for the environment and communities to thrive.
We help asset owners manage the cultural and mindset shifts required to move from operations to decommissioning. We employ practical, technically and commercially innovative strategies to address the decontamination, dismantling, deactivation and demolition of high-hazard plants and sites.
Safety case management, environmental and radiological consultancy, and health physics support go hand in hand with our core engineering capabilities, ensuring an unrelenting safety ethos. We apply strategies to minimize waste volumes requiring final disposal and we implement innovative decommissioning and decontamination processes for U.K. clients including Sellafield Ltd, Magnox Ltd and Dounreay Site Restoration Ltd.
As a Tier 1 service provider to the U.S. Department of Energy and Atomic Energy of Canada Limited, we deliver safe and innovative solutions at complex nuclear cleanup and production sites, including the Idaho Cleanup Project, Rocky Flats Closure, Hanford Plateau Remediation and West Valley Decommissioning, just to name a few.
In Action: Sellafield Ltd, Cumbria, U.K.
40+
years guiding Sellafield’s safe decommissioning, waste management and environmental remediation
200+
nuclear facilities and the largest inventory of untreated nuclear waste in the world
A pioneer for the U.K.’s nuclear industry, Sellafield supported national defense, generated electricity for nearly half a century and developed the ability to safely manage nuclear waste – delivering great benefit, while also creating a complex nuclear cleanup challenge for which there aren’t any blueprints. We’ve worked for more than 40 years to guide Sellafield’s safe decommissioning, waste management and environmental remediation.
Photo courtesy of Sellafield Ltd©
Select Projects
RBMK Decommissioning, Ignalina, Lithuania
The two RBMK reactors at Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant once supplied more than 88% of Lithuania’s electricity. Since reactor closure, the site has been focused on waste management and decommissioning. We manage the client’s Project Management Unit for Ignalina’s key decommissioning infrastructure, including the Interim Spent Fuel Storage Facility (ISFSF), which covers almost six hectares and holds up to 16,000 heat-producing fuel assemblies in about 190 containers. The ISFSF opened in October 2016 and the final container is due to be moved in by the end of 2022.
Waste Retrieval, CEA Marcoule, France
Jacobs and Orano are working together to retrieve 50 tonnes (55 tons) of waste, including discarded magnesium sheaths, which are stored at CEA Marcoule in France. Our support includes designing both a remotely-operated robotic arm to remove the waste sheaths from a storage silo and a geopolymer manufacturing unit to be used to immobilize them. Once treated with the geopolymer, the waste can then be made ready for long-term storage in a geological disposal facility.
Nuclear Damage Compensation and Decommissioning Facilitation Corporation, Japan
Our major study into managing radioactive waste at Fukushima Daiichi helped Japan’s Nuclear Damage Compensation and Decommissioning Facilitation Corporation to develop a long-term waste management strategy for the site. With experience of providing similar services to the U.K., continental Europe and the U.S., our team identified practical planning tools to support the development of a waste management strategy at Fukushima, which included strategic planning, logistical modelling and assessment methods, combined with effective waste sampling and analysis approaches.
Dounreay Decommissioning Program, Scotland, U.K.
At the northernmost tip of Scotland, Jacobs is part of the Parent Body Organisation managing the largest single site closure contract ever let in the U.K. The Dounreay site is one of the most complex nuclear decommissioning programs in Europe, with extensive remediation activities underway to return the site to as near its original condition as possible. The experimental nature of many of its redundant facilities means the cleanup and demolition requires innovation as well as great care. As a direct result of our partnering, major strides have been made in taking these facilities to a safer condition and benefitting residents throughout the area.
West Valley Decommissioning Phase 1, West Valley, New York, U.S.
Forty miles south of Buffalo, New York, Jacobs is successfully carrying out the first phase of decommissioning of the former West Valley Demonstration Project where spent nuclear fuel was reprocessed during the 1960s and 1970s.
Paducah Deactivation and Remediation Contract, Paducah, Kentucky, U.S.
Our partnership is overseeing over 650 structures, properties and buildings at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant – situated on approximately 3,500 acres in western Kentucky – and optimize maintenance and surveillance costs to facilitate additional remediation and deactivation operations under the contract.