UK completes final return of vitrified high-level waste to Germany

The final return of vitrified high-level waste from the UK to Germany landed on June 26, ending a decades-long Sellafield obligation and handing the last shipment into interim storage at Brokdorf. Seven flasks left Sellafield by rail for Barrow, crossed by sea on the Pacific Grebe, were unloaded at Brunsbüttel and then moved on to the Brokdorf site, closing the last planned UK-to-Germany movement in a repatriation programme tied to the old overseas fuel reprocessing chain.

The final move required three dedicated rail movements and specially engineered wagons, while each flask weighed more than 100 tonnes and needed specialist heavy-lift handling at the port. Nuclear Transport Solutions: “decades of expertise, investment, and commitment” to safely sending the material home. The mission completion reduces long-term liabilities and fulfills a government commitment.

This was not a standalone transport, but the third step in a short run of returns that began in 2020. The first shipment carried six flasks to Biblis, the second moved seven flasks to Isar in 2025, and this final consignment, also seven flasks, completed the sequence. BASE, Germany’s Federal Office for the Safety of Nuclear Waste Management, set the obligation at seven containers of vitrified high-level radioactive waste from the UK to Brokdorf, and Germany has barred sending spent fuel abroad for reprocessing since 2005. The waste itself is a legacy of Sellafield’s overseas fuel reprocessing programme, which ended in 2018.

It clears the overseas return obligation and closes the Sellafield leg of the back-end contract, but it does not remove the material from the national waste inventory. The containers still go into interim storage at Brokdorf. Germany had already finished its last vitrified reprocessing return from France in November 2024, so the Sellafield shipment completed the country’s overseas repatriation cycle only after the French route was closed.

Sellafield Ltd put the number of containers prepared for return to overseas customers since 2008 at 1,840, after THORP ran from 1994 to November 2018 and reprocessed more than 9,000 tonnes of used fuel from 30 customers in nine countries.