Tallest chimney at Sellafield site to be meticulously deconstructed.
Vinci subsidiary Nuvia has been handed the tricky tasks of taking down the tallest chimney stack at the Sellafield nuclear plant, according to industry news portal, The Construction Index.
The 61 metre tall chimney sits on top of the 11-storey First Generation Reprocessing Plant, standing 122 metres high in total.
It is right in the centre of one of the busiest areas of the site, so cannot just be knocked down or blown up. Instead it will be surgically dismantled using a special platform, a process that will take several years to complete. Some 600 tonnes of concrete and rebar and more than 25 tonnes of stainless steel will be removed, bit by bit.
Project manager Matthew Hodgson said: “The job of bringing down the stack is going to be a delicate operation to ensure 100% safety of all personnel and surrounding nuclear plants. We have employed Nuvia Limited who has been working with us and a number of other contractors, including Delta Steeplejacks, for the last three years on the demolition scheme.
“Obviously conventional demolition using explosives is not feasible therefore we will use an ingenious self-climbing platform which will bring the chimney down bit by bit in a controlled manner.”
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