Windscale Vitrification Plant

The Windscale Vitrification Plant (WVP) is a facility for the vitrification of highly radioactive waste from the operation of the reprocessing facilities in Sellafield (formerly Windscale). The liquid waste is mixed with glass particles and fused in an oven to form a solid block of glass.

The plant has three process lines and is based on the French AVM process. The core element is an inductively heated melting furnace in which the previously calcined waste is fused to borosilicate glass with the addition of glass frit (glass beads 1 to 2 mm in diameter) . The melt is filled into stainless steel containers. These are welded, externally decontaminated and placed in an air-cooled interim storage facility. The warehouse consists of a total of 800 vertical storage bays (channels). Ten containers are stacked one on top of the other in a shaft. They are cooled by natural air circulation. The total storage capacity is 8,000 containers. By 2001, 2,280 containers had been stored.