Construction of Evaporator D
Project
Highly active evaporators play a pivotal role in the delivery of reprocessing, historic clean up and hazard reduction missions across the Sellafield site. Construction of Evaporator D, a new Highly Active (HA) Liquid Evaporator will provide additional evaporator capacity to support the sites existing evaporators. The design for Evaporator D is based around the fabrication of large modules at an off-site facility.
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. This is the first time in the history of the Sellafield site that large- scale modular construction will be used.
Achievements
Construction of the building foundations (raft) started in May 2009 with the final concrete pour of the raft foundation being completed in August 2009. In total five pours were undertaken with 1661m3 of concrete poured.
Planning Application was granted in August 2009 for the Marine Access Development. This supports the construction of a temporary bridge over the River Ehen, earthworks on the Ehen spit and a temporary ramp to be positioned on the beach area.
The contract for the fabrication of the Highly Active and Non-Highly Active modules has been awarded to Interserve Industrial Services Ltd.
The contract for the transport and shipping element of the module delivery, including the gantry and heavy lift works has been awarded to Mammoet UK Ltd.
A Project Alliance Team Building Event held in September 2009 was hailed a great success. Over 200 personnel from both organisations (Sellafield Ltd and Costains) attended the event.
Construction of the Self Erecting Tower Crane bases was completed September 2009.
The project then moved into the 'main build' phase of work in November 2009 with the most visible change on site being the arrival of the self-erecting tower cranes.
The alliance project team achieved 500,000 man hours without a single first aid case in November 2009. As part of the celebrations Charles Sweeney (COGAP Managing Director) and Fran Williams (Sellafield Ltd EHS&Q Director) presented a cheque for £5,000 to the Cumbria Flood Recovery Fund, nominated by the project employees.
A series of barge landing and off–load trials were undertaken by the Evaporator D project team in December 2009. The trials were a successful demonstration of the ability of the barge to land on the beach and off load modules.
At the end of 2009 a total of 2879m3 of concrete had been poured, along with 809te of Rebar being fixed.
Construction of Evaporator D
Construction of Evaporator D
