NSG Ltd

NIS and NSG are supporting the recovery operations at the Fukushima Power Plant in Japan, which was badly damaged by the earthquake and tsunami earlier this year.

The Pile Fuel Storage Pond team at Sellafield has arranged for ten drums of ion exchange medium to be transferred to the Fukushima plant to allow the early commencement of water clean-up activities at the site.

Sellafield uses the material in its Local Effluent Treatment Plant, which NIS manufactured. The plant uses filtration cartridges which NIS also has an on-going contract to supply. NSG provide a service to fill the cartridges with the ion exchange medium.

The medium known as IONSIV IE-911 is used to remove radioactive caesium from liquid streams and is usually only manufactured from a company called UOP LLC. The factory, which is based in Alabama USA, requires a long lead time as it has to be specially set up to produce this material.

Representatives of UOP contacted Sellafield Ltd to ask if they would ‘loan’ some of the stock of the material to support the Fukushima works, on the basis that it could be replaced in October this year.

Given the importance of the recovery works, both Sellafield and the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) agreed to the release of the material on behalf of the programme. NSG organised the packing and delivery of the drums from where they were held in storage. The efforts of NIS project staff also helped to accelerate the transportation logistics and managed to deliver the material to the Japanese plant in under a week.

In addition to the above, NSG’s Health Physics teams have been supporting the Department for Transport and the Maritime Coastguard Agency by monitoring vessels and cargo upon arrival into the Ports of Felixstowe and Tyne and Wear from the Bay of Tokyo. Derek Whittingham, NSG Project Manager said, ‘We were very pleased to be able to support the UK Governmental Departments in their efforts to confirm that there were no residual radiological issues resulting from the vessels being in Tokyo at the time of the recent events in Japan.’.