End of an era for Harwell’s ‘Tank Farm’
November 17, 2011
The RSRL Harwell’s Liquid Effluent Treatment Plant (LETP), a complex of buildings that has been providing essential services for the RSRL Harwell site for decades, is approaching the last phase of its operational life, prior to final decommissioning.
Since the late 1940s the LETP, known locally as the ‘Tank Farm’, has been treating active and non-active effluent waste arising from the site, as well as processing and treating historic legacy waste. However, as the UK’s civil nuclear programme on the site has wound down, the need for the LETP’s facilities has diminished. RSRL is constructing a small, more energy efficient, replacement effluent treatment plant near its waste management facility, B462, to clean up the small amount of liquids that will be generated in the future.
The decommissioning team will get an early start on decommissioning by working around sections of the facility needed to process water until the replacement plant comes on line in 2013. Decommissioning of the buildings will be followed by removal of underground structures and cleanup of soil, as necessary. Radioactivity levels in the clean area will be verified to meet the standard to release the area from Harwell's nuclear site licence and the land will be returned to Harwell Oxford for reuse.
“We are on the cusp of commencing final decommissioning of the LETP, prior to final remediation of the whole area,” explained Simon Petty, RSRL Harwell Project Controls Manager. “But in the meantime, and in parallel with its decommissioning objectives, the plant still has an important operational role to fulfil, in terms of sampling, analysing and treating effluent arisings from the main site, processing and encapsulating legacy waste, and maintaining key facilities across the Harwell site.”
Pictures 1 and 2: LETP in 1960 and in 2009
For more information please contact Angela Vincent, RSRL Communications Manager
