(SATURN CDT)Enhancing strategic decision-making for new-build nuclear storage facilities via environmental life cycle assessment

About the Project

This project is part-funded by the NDA Bursary scheme and will involve close collaboration with industrial partners at UKNNL and Sellafield Ltd. The project will apply environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) and the planetary boundaries framework to the early-stage design of storage facilities in the nuclear sector, focusing on waste stores.

The project will identify future store requirements at Sellafield and beyond, with consideration of the needs of the wider NDA estate over the coming decades. A key case study is anticipated to be ILW box encapsulation plant product stores (BEPPS).

LCA modelling will begin with BEPPS2, spanning material extraction to operation and ultimately decommissioning, yielding not only carbon footprint estimates but a broad range of at least 16 different environmental impacts.

Finally, the absolute sustainability framework will be used to evaluate these impacts against planetary boundaries.