Teams at Sellafield are celebrating after they scooped a raft of safety awards as well as being shortlisted for education and research prizes.

Employees and contractors working at Sellafield were recognised for their work at last week's virtual ceremony of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA) awards.

The nuclear firm was also shortlisted for three awards at October’s Festival of Education and Research, run by the Association for Project Management.

Sellafield graduate Flo Hanlon is up for Project Management Graduate of the Year award, while Holly Stainton is up for Project Management Apprentice of the Year.

Sellafield Ltd has been shortlisted for the Project Management Developmental Programme of the Year with its Project Academy and the Project Delivery Directorate Training Lead, Janis Reid.

Neil Crewdson, interim project director at Sellafield Ltd: "This is fantastic news and once again shows how we are successfully developing the next generation of people who will deliver the projects we need to make the Sellafield site safe for the future.

"Our Project Academy is central to this and will ensure West Cumbria is a centre of excellence for project delivery – skills which are essential not just on the Sellafield site, but across industry.

"It is great to see this work recognised."

Teams working at Sellafield's legacy ponds have received gold awards at the RoSPA – a seventh consecutive year for the Pile Fuel Storage Pond and the fifth consecutive year for the First Generation Magnox Storage Pond.

Legacy ponds environmental health and safety manager, Andrew Kelly, said: "This is a wonderful accomplishment and showcases the hard work we all do on a day to day basis to keep everyone safe.

"This award can only be achieved by us all putting safety as the number one priority in any task we do. This year we have had to adapt and adhere to the new COVID-19 arrangements but this is always hand in hand with nuclear, radiological, conventional and environmental safety, not superseding it."

Teams in working in remediation received a RoSPA Gold Award, their third successive gold award, for health and safety performance during 2019.

Remediation teams are responsible for a wide range of high-profile, and potentially dangerous decommissioning work across the site, including the removal of the Windscale Pile Chimney and the First Generation Reprocessing Plant stack, decommissioning of former finishing lines, as well as the demolition of facilities and buildings no longer needed.

The department is also responsible for waste management facilities across the site.

David Connolly, remediation operating unit head, said: "I’d like to congratulate all teams who entered and picked up awards this year. I thank all our teams and supply chain colleagues for their continuing efforts towards keeping safe and secure. It’s important we all remain focused on all hazards in our workplaces to protect ourselves and others, and our environment."

Sellafield contractors also picked up awards, including Jacobs Field Services (JFS) and Cumbria Nuclear Solutions Ltd (CNSL).