Highly active waste arrives in Japan
Tuesday 9th March 2010
The first shipment of highly active waste (HAW) from Sellafield has arrived safely in Japan. The waste arises from the reprocessing of used nuclear fuel at Sellafield for the NDA’s Japanese customers. A single 113te flask, containing 28 stainless steel containers of solid HAW, was transported in January from the Sellafield site, on a specially constructed rail wagon, to the ...
John Kyffin
Job role: I am on the graduate scheme working in Thorp Technical. My job is to provide scientific support to the parts of the fuel reprocessing plant that deal with the liquid and gaseous effluents from the process as well as the reagent and sampling systems. However, I often do jobs for other areas of Thorp which means that I am constantly learning in detail how the whole process works and having to call on science that I may not have used for a while! I still staggered how complex the plant is and how it was ever designed in the detail required to function.
Qualifications: Natural Sciences degree, Cambridge University
Years at Sellafield: 9 months
Video
The first return of solid highly active waste leaving the Sellafield site, on route to Barrow for loading on to the Pacific Sandpiper
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Challenges: These have ranged from preparing a justification of the need for an import/export facility, to the development of a suitable contract strategy and determination of a suitable soil disposal route. The location of the project required detailed planning prior to work commencing.
Encapsulated Product Store
Solution: considerable stakeholder management has been undertaken to enable the project to proceed. Extensive ecological sampling has also enabled the soil to be disposed of as free release waste.
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Disposal of the Kabelschlepp
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Size reduce and dispose of the Kabelschlepp
Achievements Approximately 1 tonne of metal was processed and released into the commercial scrap market and over £50,000 has been saved in disposal costs.
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Sludge Packaging Plant (SPP1)
Background: Work to build Sludge Packaging Plant (SPP1) – the facility responsible for receiving and processing legacy sludge prior to long term storage or disposal, began in November 2005.
Challenge: Restrictions due to the sensitivity of adjacent facilities - which preclude the use of conventional construction techniques, have provided the biggest challenges to this project. Delivery and installation of the Effluent Collection Vessel and Pipe Bridge which will connect the Magnox Fuel Receipt, Storage and decanning facility with SPP1 will also prove challenging.
Solution: The first concrete pour of the new structure took place on Tuesday 6 May 2008. In February 2009, the first concrete pour on the buffer cell was completed marking a halfway stage for the team.
Sludge Packaging Plant (SPP1)
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Project: Construction of Evaporator D, a new Highly Active (HA) Liquid Evaporator, providing additional evaporator capacity to support the sites existing evaporators.
Challenges The project has faced a number of challenges ranging from preparing a justification of the need for a new facility, and the development of a construction methodology to minimise risk to personnel and to existing buildings.
Solution The strategy for Evaporator D is for the off-site fabrication of large scale modules which are then transported to site by sea and installed into the buildings concrete shell using a gantry system.
Construction of Evaporator D
