Underpinning the Safety Case for Explosive Nuclear Site Demolition
Project: Production and verification of underpinning documentation to support the safety case for the explosive demolition of Cooling towers at the Calder Hall and Chapelcross nuclear reactor sites.
Client: Sellafield Limited, Sellafield
The Challenge
WSC were contracted to provide underpinning documentation to support the safety case for the demolition of the Calder Hall and Chapelcross cooling towers.
The Solution
- The projects undertaken involved detailed computational fluid dynamics modelling of the dust clouds generated from the
demolition of the towers and the dispersion and spread of the dust to determine risks both on-site and off-site. - In addition to the numerical modelling WSC were involved in direct interaction with the regulators and also in the verification of
technical documentation produced by the Client. - A detailed monitoring exercise was undertaken to evaluate the airborne dust levels and ambient radioactivity during the demolition.
The Benefits
The detailed modelling work enabled the customer to demonstrate to the regulators that the use of explosive demolition was the safe and would not lead to adverse environmental effects. This was verified by the monitoring exercise.