TECHNICAL TOURS
PLEASE NOTE:
All tours are scheduled for after the conference.
To register for any one of these tours,
please refer to our registration application.
Four technical tours are planned to see UK radioactive waste management programs first hand. The tours will take place immediately after the conference on Thursday and Friday. Please Note:Tour 1A and 1B will depart on the same bus from ACC and will separate on Friday and return to the Liverpool Train station or the ACC.
All technical tours for ICEM’09 are space limited and require early security clearances. Paperwork for security clearances must be received by August 31, 2009. We strive to keep the costs of these excellent tours at a minimum resulting with many on our waiting lists. Regrettably, for our past ICEM tours, we have had numerous last minute cancellations with insufficient time to process the security clearance for individuals on the waiting list. To assist space for the attendees who strongly desire to attend, we are implementing for ICEM’09 a tour cancellation fee of GBP £82 ($140 USD). An invoice for the additional amount will be sent after the conference if you do not attend your technical tour without sufficient time for us to process a substitute. The cancellation fee will be waived for justified cancellations approved by the ICEM Finance Committee.
For additional information on any of these tours please contact: Ian Currie, AMEC Ltd, V:+44 (0)1565 68 4902, or by email at ian.d.currie@amec.com or go to the registration counter.
Tour 1A - Sellafield (sponsored by Nuclear Management Partnership) on Thursday and Friday
The Sellafield site owned by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) and managed by Nuclear Management Partnership (a joint venture company of Washington URS, Areva and AMEC) is the largest and best known UK site.Sellafield is in the NW of England and consists of two nuclear fuel reprocessing plants (Magnox and THORP) and their supporting waste and effluent treatment facilities. There are also a number of old and redundant storage and waste treatment facilities - referred to as legacy plants. The tour will include of a visit to some of these legacy plants where decommissioning and remediation operations are underway and will include storage and waste processing facilities originally constructed in support of Magnox reprocessing operations.
This tour will depart at 15:00 on Thursday 15 October, with delegates taking a coach from Liverpool to Cumbria. The journey will take approximately 3 hours, so delegates will arrive around 18:00. Delegates should make their own accommodation arrangements, and are strongly advised to book early. Hotel bookings can be made via The Corporate Team and several hotels are listed on the conference hotel list. The following hotel where the bus will stop is:
• Ennerdale Country House, www.oxfordhotelsandinns.com, Singles Start from £89
The Coach will collect delegates the following morning for the 10 minutes drive to Sellafield. The tour will last approximately 4 hours from 09:00 to 13:00, after which the coach will make the return journey to Liverpool.
Tour 1B – UK Low Level Waste Repository on Thursday and Friday
The LLWR site owned by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) and managed by UK Nuclear Waste Management (a joint venture company of Washington URS, Studsvik UK, and Areva) is the UK’s only licensed disposal site for LLW. The tour will include a discussion of the implementation strategy for management of LLW across the UK and a windshield tour of the repository facilities. The original trench facilities (1959-1985) and Vault 8 (1985-2009) will be shown as well as the new Vault 9 expected to become operational in 2009.
This tour will depart at 15:00 on Thursday 15 October, with delegates taking a coach from Liverpool to Cumbria. The journey will take approximately 3 hours, so delegates will arrive around 18:00. Delegates should make their own accommodation arrangements, and are strongly advised to book early. Hotel bookings can be made via The Corporate Team and several hotels are listed on the conference hotel list. The following hotel is where the bus will stop:
• Ennerdale Country House, www.oxfordhotelsandinns.com, Singles Start from £89
The Coach will collect delegates the following morning for the 20 minutes drive to LLWR Site. The tour will last approximately 4 hours from 09:00 to 13:00, after which the coach will make the return journey to Liverpool.
Tour 2 – Springfields Fuel Fabrication Plant on Thursday Afternoon
Springfields Fuels Ltd is managed and operated by Westinghouse Electric UK Ltd., on behalf of theNuclear Decommissioning Authority. Nuclear fuel has been made at Springfields, near Preston in Lancashire, since 1946 and has the facilities to manufacture fuel for most types of nuclear reactors.
Springfields was the first plant in the world to make nuclear fuel for commercial power stations and has produced several million fuel elements and supplied products and services to over 140 reactors in 15 countries. Around 15% of all the electricity generated in the UK comes from power stations using nuclear fuel manufactured at Springfields. The visit will include an overview to the operations at Springfields and a tour of the Oxide Fuels Complex (OFC), which is one of the most advanced nuclear fuel manufacturing plants in the world. Within one plant, state-of-the-art-manufacturing techniques produce both Advanced Gas-cooled Reactor (AGR) and Light Water Reactor (LWR) fuels.
A coach will leave Liverpool at 12:00 on Thursday 15 October to make the 1 hour journey to Springfields. The tour will last approximately 4 hours from 13:00 to 17:00, after which the coach will make the return journey to Liverpool.
Tour 3 – Trawsfynydd on Thursday Afternoon
Trawsfynydd Site, the first inland civil nuclear site in the UK, is owned by the NDA and managed by Magnox North.
Trawsfynydd, a twin Magnox reactor station now defuelled, is the only decommissioned site in the UK recovering waste from all of its waste streams. The site is located on a 15.4 hectare site, on the northern bank of an inland lake in the heart of Snowdonia National Park. The site has two main projects, the recovery of legacy waste from various vaults around the site, and the preparation of the reactor buildings for height reduction. The tour will include a visit to waste recovery and the storage facilities.
A coach will leave Liverpool at 12:00 on Thursday 15 October to make the 2.5 hour journey to Trawsfynydd in North Wales. The tour will last approximately 3 hours from 14:30 until 17:30, after which the coach will make the return journey back to Liverpool.