North West

Sellafield makes changes for the future

Sellafield Ltd Profile

Sellafield Ltd is responsible for safely delivering decommissioning, reprocessing and nuclear waste management on behalf of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority. The company has the largest concentration of nuclear expertise in Europe, boasting over 50 years of experience.

One of the recent projects at their Cumbria site is Evaporator D, a new Highly Active (HA) Liquid Evaporator that will provide additional evaporator capacity to support the existing evaporators. Highly active evaporators play a vital role in the delivery of reprocessing and hazard reduction missions across the Sellafield site.

The Evaporator D building comprises 11 prefrabicated modules, the sizes of which range from 60 to 500 tonnes. In total, the building will incorporate over 22,000 metres of pipework and more than 500 plant items.

Sellafield Ltd Profile

In order to provide services to the new Evaporator D building, a 1600m² development has been constructed on the site. The development will incorporate a compressed air plant, switchroom and diesel generator along with cooling towers and substations. Designed to minimise the impact on road and rail access in the area, the development will be linked by a high level pipe bridge over one of the main Sellafield site roads.

Another welcome addition is the Separation Area Ventilation (SAV) project, which will see the demolition and replacement of two ageing stacks with a long term facility to support future decommissioning.

Construction of the new discharge facility began in early 2010 and when complete the facility will comprise a 120-metre high stack with an associated plant room, monitoring room and substation. The three-storey plant room will house the fans, additional filtration and the control room.

Sellafield Ltd Profile

Located away from the main processing areas of the site, the facility will be connected to the various donor plants via new ductwork runs and pipe bridges.

The main design-build contractor is Doosan Babcock, whilst subcontracts have been awarded to Kier Construction, Balfour Kilpatrick, Jacobs Engineering, Bierrum International, Shepley Engineers and Senior Hargreaves.

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