Giant Safety Shelter is now in position at Chernobyl
- December 16, 2016
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- Bob Krell
- Posted in Environmental
Chernobyl’s safety shelter is the world’s largest mobile metal structure, was put into place on November 29th. This project was started in 2010, cost roughly €1.5 billion, and now covers reactor 4, the reactor that had exploded in April of 1986. It has been called the New Safe Confinement (NSC) and was built to go over the concrete sarcophagus that had been quickly put over the site. The sarcophagus still allowed unsafe radiation immediately above the reactor to become too intense. Using hydraulic jacks, the NSC was placed over the reactor to seal off the unit and has been designed to prevent additional radioactive material from leaking out over the next 100 years,.
Weighing 36,200 tons and measuring 162m long by 108m high, the NSC has a span of 257m. Having to have been built in two pieces, it was joined together in 2015 and was designed to withstand a variety of weather concerns: rain, snow, heat, cold, a class 3 tornado, or a 6.0 magnitude earthquake. It has double walls; the interior walls are smooth to “minimize the risk of dust deposition and accumulation” said the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). It is fire-resistant, corrosion resistant and non-magnetic.Over the next
Over the next year work will begin to make sure that the structure is airtight. Work will begin to remove the existing sarcophagus and the remains of the reactor, in addition to securing the radioactive materials inside of the shelter.
Even with all of these precautions, the surrounding area (approximately 1,000 miles) will be closed to unsanctioned visitors and overall be largely uninhabitable.The NSC construction work had been taken on by Novarka, a collaboration between Vinci Construction and Bouygues Construction in 2012. This followed extensive preparation on site including two trenches that would house longitudinal beams to serve as the arch foundations.
The NSC construction work had been taken on by Novarka, a collaboration between Vinci Construction and Bouygues Construction in 2012. This followed extensive preparation on site including two trenches that would house longitudinal beams to serve as the arch foundations.
Ostap Smerak, Ukraine’s ecology minister said that the undertaking to cover the reactor was “the beginning of the end of a 30-year long fight with the consequences of the 1986 accident. The credit for construction of this one-of-a-kind technological structure goes to an expert team of engineers and builders. This is a historic step towards the improvement of environmental safety throughout the world, as well as in the Chernobyl exclusion zone.
“We were not building this arch for ourselves. We were building it for our children, our grandchildren and for our great-grandchildren. This is our contribution to the future, in line with our responsibility for those who will come after us” said the Director-General of Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, Igor Gramotkin.
Source: EBRD via www.thecivilengineer.org