Wood, the global engineering and technical services company, designed, built and commissioned equipment and facilities used to repackage nuclear material so that it could be transported across the Atlantic.
The UK’s Nuclear Decommissioning Authority and the USA’s National Nuclear Security Administration announced the successful completion of the export programme on Friday.
A suite of bespoke gloveboxes was built within a purpose-built, seismically qualified structure inside an existing facility, so that the highly enriched uranium could be handled safely within a controlled environment at the Dounreay nuclear site in Scotland, UK.
Working with the team at site operators Dounreay Site Restoration Ltd, Wood was responsible for all aspects of the engineering including process, civil, HVAC and control and instrumentation design. The company’s criticality and shielding team carried out hundreds of software calculations to demonstrate process safety covering both radiation protection and criticality.
Andy White, vice president (decommissioning) at Wood, said: “Wood and its partners in the UK’s nuclear supply chain rose to this technically demanding challenge and we are proud to see that the programme has reached a successful conclusion.”
Manufacturing of the gloveboxes was supported by Wood’s partners: Caithness-based Gow’s Lybster Ltd, Hampshire-based Aquila Nuclear Engineering and Oldham-based Universal Fabrications (North West) Ltd.
Dan Andrews, Wood engineering manager, carrying out tests on the gloveboxes during commissioning.