Nuclear Power’s Second Act

By Amy McLellan

As Europe invests in new nuclear power plants, the retirement of older plants is opening an equally compelling market. Industry experts including Mammoet share insights into the opportunities and challenges of decommissioning.

From Issue 1, 2026 of Breakbulk Magazine

(5-minute read)

As momentum builds behind a new wave of nuclear investment, there is a parallel and pressing challenge: dealing with the legacy of the previous wave. While nuclear power delivers reliable, carbon-free electricity around the clock, it comes with a very long tail: nuclear waste.

The clean-up of 17 of the UK’s earliest nuclear sites illustrates the scale of the challenge. Some date back to the postwar nuclear industry of the 1940s, and their decommissioning is expected to last around 120 years. Dismantling, waste management, disposal and land remediation are likely to continue well into the 22nd century.

The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) owns these 17 historic sites on behalf of the UK government and determines how they should be decommissioned. The work itself is carried out by site license companies (SLCs), with annual costs currently running at around £3 billion.

A 2019 forecast put the total cost of the UK’s nuclear clean-up at approximately £124 billion over the next 120 years, slightly higher than the previous year’s estimate. Given the timescales involved, however, precise forecasting is impossible. Depending on technological advances, political decisions and global economic conditions, estimates range from £99 billion to £232 billion.

And the list of assets entering decommissioning continues to grow. EDF Energy, for example, is preparing to transition its Advanced Gas-Cooled Reactor fleet into decommissioning, with the first site, Hunterston B, expected to enter the process in 2027.

Europe’s Decommissioning Wave

While the UK’s challenge is unique in scale and complexity due to its post-war nuclear experimentation and expansion, other countries face their own decommissioning burdens. A report by the Energy Industries Council (EIC) and Decom Mission finds that Europe’s nuclear decommissioning pipeline exceeds US$120 billion, with US$89 billion in projects already awarded and prospective contracts extending for decades.

This wave of nuclear decommissioning coincides with the retirement of ageing infrastructure across other energy sectors. North Sea oil and gas platforms and first-generation offshore wind farms in Northern Europe are entering their end-of-life phases.

Coal plant closures are accelerating across Southern and Eastern Europe, including in Austria, the Czech Republic, Denmark and Poland, while refinery closures are gathering pace in the UK and other parts of Western Europe.

The result is intense competition across the supply chain for technically complex demolition work involving large, interconnected structures and contaminated materials, along with a limited pool of specialist contractors authorized to handle nuclear waste.

More than 130 nuclear reactors across Europe are undergoing, preparing for, or scheduled for decommissioning under multi-decade programs. The UK hosts the largest concentration of projects, led by Sellafield, Magnox and Dounreay, followed by Germany and France.

Strategic Choice

“End-of-life planning is now a strategic exercise,” said Stuart Broadley, CEO of the EIC. “The same supply chain that dismantles aging oil, gas and nuclear assets is also building the infrastructure of the energy transition. Securing vessel slots, skilled crews and waste-handling capacity early is becoming critical to controlling cost and schedule.”

“Decommissioning is a growth market in its own right,” added Sam Long, CEO of trade association Decom Mission. “As global energy systems evolve, the challenge is not only to retire assets safely, but to do so efficiently and sustainably. Delivery depends on the availability of heavy-lift vessels, specialized cranes, skilled workers, and disciplined project management.”

For project cargo specialists, this represents a substantial pipeline of opportunity, provided all parties plan ahead and collaborate. “There needs to be collaboration,” said Thomas Bacon, market intelligence manager, OPEX & Decommissioning at the EIC. “There are transferable skills across the supply chain.”

Specialist Heavy-Lift Skills

Many in the project cargo space already have dedicated teams used to dealing with these complex jobs. Heavy-lift specialist Mammoet, which has a specialist team of nuclear experts from across Europe to execute high-profile nuclear projects all over the world, is among those benefiting from the decommissioning boom.

In December 2025, its nuclear team transported four steam generators from PreussenElektra’s decommissioned Unterweser nuclear power plant (KKU) in Germany. The self-propelled modular transporter (SPMT) move followed earlier work at the site, where large components were removed in one piece from the reactor building on behalf of Framatome GmbH.

Known as “rip and ship,” the approach involves extracting major components intact so they can be transferred immediately offsite to specialist nuclear waste disposal facilities. Cutting components onsite carries the risk of radioactive contamination spreading within controlled areas and therefore must be performed in highly controlled environments, often requiring the construction of costly protective structures. At older nuclear power plants, usable space is frequently limited, as many facilities were not designed with decommissioning in mind.

The team of nuclear experts and engineers from Framatome and Mammoet jointly developed a process that enabled the steam generators to be removed from the reactor building in one piece, thereby helping to optimize the decommissioning process.

“Owners and operators always consider all planning dimensions for the decommissioning process,” said Andreas Franzke, senior sales manager and segment lead, power and nuclear, at Mammoet in Germany. “Process optimizations lead to cost savings, because every day of dismantling results in costs. One way to optimize the process is to remove the steam generators as a whole.”

Mammoet’s engineering solution to remove the 300-tonne steam generators from the reactor building without dismantling them involved using its self-developed DHS-500 system to maneuver the steam generator in any direction and around all obstacles inside the confined reactor building.

The DHS-500, which can be customized to the conditions of a building, comprises a top spreader beam that can be bolt-fastened to the hook of overhead cranes. The DHS-500 allowed each steam generator to be lifted, tilted from a vertical to horizontal position and easily maneuvered around obstacles blocking its route to the exit.

A skidding system was used to move the steam generators through the elevated lock of the reactor building. They were skidded to a position just outside and then rigged to an overhead portal crane. The portal crane then lowered the steam generators 25 meters onto 16 axle lines of power steering trailers.

Pipeline of Opportunity

As nuclear power re-enters the global energy mix as a cornerstone of decarbonization and digital growth, the industry is being forced to confront the full lifecycle of its assets. The investment flowing into new reactors and advanced technologies is mirrored by an equally vast, long-term commitment to dismantle, transport and safely dispose of the infrastructure built during the last nuclear expansion.

For project cargo specialists, this convergence presents a rare dual opportunity. Decommissioning is a multi-decade, capital-intensive market and the ability to handle oversized, contaminated and time-critical cargo — often within severely constrained sites — places heavy-lift and project logistics providers at the center of successful nuclear retirements.

However, the scale of the challenge also raises the stakes. With nuclear decommissioning competing for vessels, equipment and skilled labor alongside offshore wind, oil and gas and industrial demolition, early engagement and collaboration across the supply chain will be essential to control costs, reduce risks and unlock value.


The opportunities linked to the buildout of SMRs will be one of the topics discussed at a panel session at Breakbulk Middle East. Powering the Gulf: Oil, Gas and Nuclear in the Age of Energy Transition will take place on the main stage on Thursday, Feb. 5 from 11:30am-12:15pm.

Top photo: Mammoet handles steam generators from the decommissioned Unterweser NPP in Germany. Credit: Mammoet