Is this Britain's longest-running demolition project?

Getting rid of a nuclear power station built on the banks of a lake in one of Great Britain's most beautiful and popular National Parks is proving one of the country's longest-running demolition jobs. Paul Thompson reports.

Decommissioning Magnox North's nuclear power station at Trawsfynydd in the Snowdonia National Park is going to be a long job. No one knows quite how long the overall process will take because of the lack of a national repository for intermediate level radioactive waste.

This facility is a vital cog in the decommissioning of all the UK's nuclear power stations ensuring contractors have somewhere safe to house the radioactive remnants of power production.

Unsurprisingly, there are not too many takers when communities are asked if they fancy a radioactive waste repository in their back gardens and the government has yet to make its decision on potential sites. Nevertheless, that sort of fundamental sticking point is not being allowed to foil the decommissioning process.

Complex scenario

In a complex scenario a team working on the scheme will recover all intermediate and low-level legacy radioactive waste at the site and stash it in the purpose-built Intermediate Level Waste (ILW) Store that has been built at Trawsfynydd. There it will stay until the site for the national facility has been finalised.

Alongside this the twin reactor buildings, which have stood sentinel over Lake Trawsfynydd since the power station's construction in the 1960s, will be reduced in height and have a capping roof built within them, covering the top of the old reactor face. Eventually these will be cocooned in a newly built shell before the whole site is mothballed until 2088 in what is termed the 'care and maintenance' phase. Then, final site clearance is due to begin.

Now if the reasoning behind the scheme is difficult enough to explain, try to imagine the complexity of actually carrying out the work and managing the contracts.

"We had been thinking about doing something to try and change the method of working since 2004," explains Sion Edwards, head of sub-contract management at station owner Magnox North. "We operated traditional procurement and contract management methods and by the nature of our funding that meant there were lots of smaller contracts and lots of transactions within them. We had a series of disputes with a series of suppliers that focused the mind on the cost of these disputes."

Partnership created

What started as a focusing of minds saw the creation of the Trawsfynydd Strategic Integrated Partnership in October 2005, just 12 months after the initial idea had been floated.

After going through an OJEU compliant selection process, the final TSIF team of Magnox North - Costain leading the civils and demolition work, Amec leading the mechanical and electrical work, decontamination specialist Aker Solutions and technical services partner the VT Group - was appointed.

"The philosophy about setting up the framework was to talk to people who had gone through the experience before. We wanted a system that could deliver project certainty, increase competence and knowledge transfer, provide best value and foster innovation among other things," explains Edwards.

Focus on framework

After pulling apart and reconstructing framework agreements and studies across a variety of sectors, the team focused on a framework that could deliver in the areas of most commercial risk. At Trawsfynydd these are concentrated on waste retrieval and processing, work to the reactor buildings, the pump house and the reactor rod cooling ponds (see box).

"When we were named as preferred contractors we all sat down and talked about the way we wanted this to work," says Don Mitchell, project delivery manager for the TSIF partnership. "We set out exactly what we wanted to achieve and even now, two-and-a-half years down the line, it holds up as our collective vision."

Project factfile

• Value: £75m
• Framework period: Three years with a two-year extension
• Civils and demolition: Costain
• Mechanical and electrical: Amec
• Decontamination: Aker Solutions
• Technical services: VT Group