Workers at the United Kingdom’s Sellafield site have started slowly bringing down a 61-meter-tall chimney that provided ventilation for nuclear material reprocessing operations.
Demolition began last month and is expected to be completed by 2020, according to a press release from the U.K. Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA).
The 1950s-era chimney, which stands on the 61-meter First Generation Reprocessing Plant, does not meet today’s standards for seismic safety and must come down, the NDA said. It has already been replaced by a newer ventilation stack.
With other nuclear facilities nearby at the West Cumbria complex, crews will not be able to use explosives or cranes to bring down the chimney. Instead, workers standing on a movable platform will employ drills, hydraulic breakers, and other tools to take the stack apart piece by piece, placing the concrete and steel debris in a nearby waste container.
The start of demolition was the result of years of planning and preparation – it took seven months alone just to move the worker platform to the top of the stack.
Contractors Nuvia Ltd. and Delta International are conducting the demolition. The value of the contract was not immediately available.
“Starting demolition of this redundant stack is a key achievement by Sellafield and another important step towards reducing the risk and hazard posed by legacy facilities on site in order to further enhance safety,” Mina Golshan, director of the Sellafield, Decommissioning, Fuel, and Waste Division at the Office of Nuclear Regulation, said in the release.
The chimney project is part of the much larger, ongoing cleanup of the Sellafield property managed by Sellafield Ltd., a wholly owned subsidiary of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority.
