Sunday 25 May 2014

One of our proudest achievements over the past few years has been the combined work we have carried out to support the ongoing operation of the evaporators in the HALES (Highly Active Liquor Evaporation and Storage) plant at Sellafield.

The HALES plant is an essential part of reprocessing and therefore of key strategic importance to Sellafield Ltd and the NDA. Work we have carried out in close consultation with our customer has directly ensured that the evaporators and several other key plants have been able to continue operating.

The UK’s National Nuclear Laboratory is in the unique position of being able to offer the full range of services to support the evaporators’ ongoing operations and safeguard future decommissioning on the site.

So what have we done?

The key areas in which we have worked are:

• Inspection devices development and deployment
• Evaporator boiling rig
• Evaporator structural assessment
• Evaporator thermal assessment

Work in each of these areas was focused on providing an updated corrosion rate assessment and accurate prediction of remaining operating life. The next few news items examine some of the key areas in which we have assisted our customer – showing the range of services we are able to offer – and presents a number of examples.