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Waste Vitrification Plant Successes
Excellent team work at the Waste Vitrification Plant (WVP) at Sellafield has achieved the highest throughput rates on record from the Vitrification Lines.
Line 3 continues to improve performance on its melter campaign by campaign since the start of active commissioning and has the potential to meet full design capacity this financial year.
On Lines 1 and 2 extended campaigns have contributed significantly to these throughputs, primarily through the introduction of “thick-walled” melters.
A record 23 containers were produced during one week in January -the best ever weekly production rate. Twenty four containers exported to store in one week was another best ever record. The team continues to push hard towards achieving the forecasted target for the financial year end of 486 containers to store, of which 441 containers have already been placed in store by the end of February.
Since December 2005 all three vitrification lines have operated in parallel rather than the normal two out of three basis, with the third line under maintenance. However the successes are not only in these areas; the container handling team have made a fantastic effort to keep up with container production rates. In addition the medium active waste team has exported a record 199 medium active waste containers to the Miscellaneous Beta Gamma Waste Store this year.
Bob Jones, head of High Level Waste Plants, commented: “The excellent output in recent weeks has been a tremendous achievement. There is no single contributory factor; the throughput is a combination of many improvements and initiatives such as mid-campaign ‘mini-outages for essential interim maintenance, allowing the teams to focus relevant work streams, as well as a lot of hard work and effort from all the operating, engineering and support team members.”
Barbara Kinrade, manufacturing manager, added: “The next 12 months will be challenging with further improvement outages planned for Line 1 while modifications are implemented and improvement works are carried out. However the team is committed to sustaining and improving performance and maintaining our excellent and safe recent performance.”
