The contract will cover the running and maintaining of the company’s entire network services, as well as upgrades and updates to current equipment across the 650 acre multi-function nuclear site close to Seascale on the coast of Cumbria.
BT said it will provide wide & local area network services and core & gateway services alongside audio and conferencing, telephony, cyber security and “upgrades to the network to enable IoT and 5G [at the site] in the future”.
The BT network will incorporate Wi-Fi, a unified communications programme to consolidate conferencing solutions such as Teams and Skype, and in-built security to enable the handling and processing of sensitive data.
Ashish Gupta, public sector managing director for BT’s Enterprise unit, said: “We are really pleased to have secured this major contract with Sellafield and look forward to working in partnership with them to create a network that is secure, fast, reliable and future-proofed, with the added capability to overlay new technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), 5G and IoT in the future.”
As part of the five-year contract BT has also agreed to provide £2m of funding for local “social value initiatives” in the West Cumbria area which will be distributed alongside Sellafield’ social impact team.
Tracey West, social impact manager at Sellafield, added: “It is really positive to see such a significant commitment from BT as part of this contract to support the delivery of our Social Impact Multiplied programme. I am looking forward to working with BT to maximise the local impact from their financial contribution.”
Originally built as a Royal Ordnance Factory in 1942, since August 2022 the primary activities at the site are nuclear waste processing and nuclear decommissioning. Nuclear fuel reprocessing ceased on 17 July 2022, when the Magnox Reprocessing Plant completed its last batch of fuel after 58 years of operation.
It is Europe's largest nuclear site and has the most diverse range of nuclear facilities in the world situated on a single site spanning more than 1,000 buildings. The UK's National Nuclear Laboratory also has its Central Laboratory and headquarters on the site.
