Waste Retrievals and Processing, Berkeley Waste Vaults, Magnox Ltd
Cavendish NuclearCavendish Nuclear designed and built a modular remote retrieval and processing facility to recover legacy waste from Berkeley's three underground vaults.
- GL13 9PA, United Kingdom
Waste Retrievals and Processing, Berkeley Waste Vaults, Magnox Ltd
The challenge was to recover several hundred tonnes of uncharacterised waste from three legacy underground vaults and provide the operator with enough real-time information to compliantly package the waste within set limits and with minimal disruption to the waste handling processing operations.
The requirement was to remotely extract the waste and process into suitable RWM compliant waste packages for future disposal. The design, build and install project was broken into 3 discreet projects (waste routes):
- R2 - Retrieval equipment to recover waste from all vaults and facility to process the Fuel Element Debris (FED) into compliant ILW disposal packages
- R3 - Facility to process containers and load into compliant packages
- R4 - Retrieval and process facility for the sludge cans.
The waste processing facility was made up of several modules, each with a defined function, had over 70 shielding plates and had to be compliant with building codes, as it was external to the facility.
Customised software was developed to provide a real-time visual display of data to inform operator go/ no go decisions for filling containers to ensure disposal and transport compliance. The system enabled the operator to perform grab dose checks, sort tray assay, container fill dose checks, container inventory checks, and automatically store all associated records (including photos, spectra, fingerprints used, logs, reports). The complete facility was assembled off-site and fully tested with the operators who were to carry out all tasks, before being stripped down and sent to site for installation.
The outcome from this approach has been the successful commencement of retrieval operations in 2016 by the Magnox team. The overall project duration for all three processing routes was 10 years at an outturn of over $100M. Approximately 40% of the overall contract value was delivered by Cavendish Nuclear's supply chain partners.
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