Goliath crane built for Sellafield retrievals

摘要

Sellafield Ltd has taken an important step towards retrieving waste from a 60-year-old nuclear waste storage silo, now that a mammoth Semi Goliath crane has been installed.The crane is an integral part of a new Waste Retrieval Facility (WRF) being built alongside the Pile Fuel Cladding Silo (PFCS) and will be used to lift 3m~3 legacy nuclear waste packages onto road transporters.The PFCS was built in 1951 to store radioactive fuel cladding from the military Windscale Piles and later from Calder Hall and Chapelcross reactors. It's effectively a giant concrete safe which has reached the end of its life and extreme safe-breaking skills are going to be used to break through the thick concrete walls and remove the radioactive waste. The WRF is made up of a giant concrete superstructure, into which bespoke waste retrieval modules will be slotted. These will dock onto the side of the PFCS to retrieve the waste through specially-designed silo doors.