While the Darlington Retube Waste Facility is ancillary to the main nuclear facility, this deceptively simple steel structure still required extensive safety and security measures that are an inherent part of dealing with radioactive material.
Walters supplied, fabricated and erected steel for the new Darlington Retube Waste Facility, requiring extensive security clearance.
Because this is part of a nuclear facility, all workers on site required extensive security clearance, which can take up to six months to acquire. We ensured that all workers, including sub-trades, had all their clearances in time to do their job.
The other challenge was getting material and workers into the site – everything and everyone needed to go through checkpoints with a similar level of security to an airport. Exiting the site required going through a scanner to check for radioactive particles. It could sometimes take up to two hours to leave the site. The steel also had to go through security – trucks needed to go through inspections that could take hours.
We coordinated deliveries on a daily basis and planned for every paperwork requirement and security eventuality to ensure that all of our people and materials could get where they needed to be when they needed to be there.