“Together with our subcontract partners we are delighted to be supporting Sellafield Ltd on this important project, which addresses one of the most challenging issues in the UK cleanup program today,” NuVision Engineering President and CEO, Van Walker
– Edited By Chris Reed –
NuVision Engineering today announced that it has been awarded a multi-million dollar contract by Sellafield Ltd to support the development and fabrication of the sludge mobilization system to be installed at the Sludge Processing and Packaging Plant (SPP-1) at the UK Nuclear Decommissioning Authority’s Sellafield site.
Under the contract, NuVision Engineering with its subcontract partners NSG Environmental Ltd and Nuclear Technologies plc, will design, fabricate, operate and decommission two scale test rigs (at 25% and 50% scale) to underpin the operating parameters of the full scale system currently under construction. The test facility will be housed at NSG’s location in Chorley in the UK and is scheduled for delivery to SL in November 2011. Operations are expected to last at least 2 years prior after which the rigs may continue to operate or could be relocated or decommissioned.
NuVision Engineering President and CEO, Van Walker said “Together with our subcontract partners we are delighted to be supporting Sellafield Ltd on this important project, which addresses one of the most challenging issues in the UK cleanup program today. The mobilization of large quantities of high-yield sludge which can have properties similar to modeling clay has proved to be beyond the capability of any other mixing technology, but NuVision Engineering's proprietary Pulse Jet Mixer systems have been demonstrated to be able to meet the duty required for this challenge.”
Background: NuVision Engineering(NVE) is an independent engineering and consulting company headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and with operations in Richland, WA; Mooresville, NC; Aiken, SC; Sterling, VA; and Oak Ridge, TN. NVE delivers cost-effective, practical solutions to customers, using technically excellent multidisciplinary teams which demonstrate a large degree of innovation and integrity. NuVision Engineering has engineered solutions to a number of challenging tank waste mixing and retrieval problems in the nuclear waste management market in both the US and UK.
As part of the Sellafield clean-up mission, a program of work is under way to retrieve and process the First Generation Magnox Storage Pond sludge into a form suitable for long term storage. The transfer of the sludge from the current pond into modern stainless steel containment (Bulk Storage Vessels BSVs) is the first stage in this process. A NuVision Engineering Power Fluidic Pulse Jet Mixer (PJM) system has been specified to manage the sludge bed in the 3 BSVs and assist in mobilization and transfer of the sludge to the Process and Export Plant at the end of the interim storage period.