Sellafield Ltd is seeking full planning permission for land preparation works.

The work would involve the bulk excavation and reprofiling of an area on the West Cumbrian site to create a serviced development platform for future development.

The intention is to create a platform to allow future delivery of the Lightly Shielded Store 1 (LSS1). This will be the subject of a future planning application and judged on its own merits.

It is Sellafield Ltd’s intention to submit a planning application for LSS1 in 2021.

The application reads: “Sellafield Ltd’s purpose is to create a clean and safe environment for future generations.

“To do this we must mitigate the major national risk on the Sellafield site and so high hazard risk reduction remains our number one priority. Sellafield Ltd is committed to providing safe and secure storage capacity for arisings from operations, high hazard risk reduction activities and broad-front decommissioning on the Sellafield Site.”

Operation of the store and future operations to empty and decommission the store will be regulated by the Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) and the Environment Agency (EA) in the coming years.

This week, the Cumbrian nuclear site received an improvement notice following a number of electrical safety incidents.

The Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) has served the notice on Sellafield Ltd, which comes after multiple electrical events became the subject of enquiries and investigations throughout recent months.

In December, the company was fined £320,000 following an electrical event in April 2020, which resulted in a worker sustaining serious injuries.

None of the incidents had any impact on the public or the environment, and all were reported to ONR by Sellafield in line with requirements.

Dr Mina Golshan, ONR deputy chief inspector, said: “The improvement notice will require Sellafield Ltd to make improvements to the training and supervision of staff carrying out electrical work across the whole site.

“We have identified these issues to be the root causes of the majority of recent events.

“The notice will also require that any lessons learned from these incidents are applied to all areas of the site where electrical work is carried out.

Sellafield Ltd must comply with the notice by January 15 2022.

A spokesperson for ONR added: “While we are satisfied that Sellafield Ltd is currently meeting the high standards expected with regards to nuclear safety, as a regulator we require sustained improvements in the area of electrical safety.”