SCOTTISH consultants heading the independent monitoring team working to secure the Chernobyl reactor site have detailed for the first time the vital work still being undertaken.
Construction and property consultancy Thomas & Adamson is monitoring work for the Chernobyl Shelter Fund and the Nuclear Safety Account at the Chernobyl plant in northern Ukraine.
The site at Chernobyl, the single biggest nuclear disaster in Europe, continues to demand attention from the international community, including a consortium of donors from 45 countries, including all the G7 nations, as well as specialist expertise and monitoring to ensure its ongoing safety.
Thomas & Adamson, headquartered in Edinburgh, is leading an international team monitoring the construction of the New Safe Confinement, the largest moveable steel structure ever built to create a barrier against release of radioactive substances as well as creating an environment for further works.
READ MORE: Is another accident on the scale of Chernobyl possible? Expert… Yes
Standing at 108 metres high, 162m long, 257m wide and weighing approximately 36,000 tonnes, the NSC is long enough and high enough to house five Airbus A380s.
Once complete, the NSC will create the appropriate conditions for the eventual dismantling and decommissioning of the contaminated Object Shelter (the original sarcophagus).
This, along with the Interim Storage Facility 2 (ISF-2), which will safely store the spent nuclear fuel from Reactors No 1, 2 and 3, has seen Thomas & Adamson provide an invaluable monitoring role for the donors.
The efforts to confine the unstable concrete and steel sarcophagus, constructed quickly after the accident, are paramount to protecting the surrounding area from deadly radiation following the 1986 meltdown.
Colin Ross, of Thomas & Adamson, based at its Kiev office and leading the project, said: “I don’t think any of us would ever have imagined that our roles as quantity surveyors and the like would have led us to work at the site of Europe’s worst nuclear disaster.”
The site is due to be handed over to the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development later this year.
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