Product category:
Process Control: SCADA, ERP, MES and networks
News Release from: ABB Automation Tech (Instrumentation + Automation) | Subject: Advant MOD300
Edited by the Processingtalk Editorial
Team on 19 October 2004
ABB-AMEC-BNFL Alliance keeps nuclear
task on track
An ABB control system is helping BNFL meet a requirement to reduce its stock of radioactive waste at the Sellafield site, as a result of an ABB/AMEC/BNFL alliance on the vitrification project
An ABB control system is helping British Nuclear Fuels Ltd meet a requirement to reduce its stock of radioactive waste at the Sellafield site To meet the reduction targets by the deadline of 2010, the company needs to improve the vitrification process that encases the radioactive waste into glass blocks
This article was originally published on Processingtalk on 17 Jul 2008 at 8.00am (UK)
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The ABB control system is installed on the Vitrification Test Rig, or VTR.
Designed for a five year operational life, the VTR is a full scale inactive test facility that allows process changes to be tested before implementing them on the real vitrification plants.
To ensure that BNFL would have enough time to test changes to the vitrification plant, the VTR had to be available this year (2004) and so a fast and efficient project management process was needed.
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This was achieved through an innovative alliancing arrangement between ABB, BNFL and AMEC - the boundaries between contracts and organisations in a traditional fixed price/fixed scope contract were eliminated, allowing the participant companies to concentrate on the overall goals of the project.
ABB Project Manager for the VTR project was Nick Middleton: "Although we each gave an estimate for our own scope of supply and the total of these formed the basis of the contract, the philosophy was that whoever was best placed in terms of cost or expertise to perform a particular task did it.
The overriding driver was to deliver a fit for purpose working plant at the lowest possible cost".
The contract worked on an incentive based target cost arrangement - penalties and monetary benefits depended on the final cost, according to the level of each company's participation in the project.
Each company therefore had a good reason to get the project finished quickly, while sticking to the quality demands stipulated by BNFL.
Although the ABB original scope only amounted to 10 percent of the contract value, its participation level was increased to 20 percent at BNFL request, due to the importance the customer attached to the control system as a critical success factor in the project.
Mike Askew, project sponsor for BNFL Operations, says: "The fact that we got the right product, at the agreed cost and on time, vindicates the choice of ABB to supply the control system.
BNFL regard the way the project was run as a real step forward in how to deliver improvements".
Adrian Fenton of AMEC, the Alliance Manager says: "By working closely together with ABB and BNFL in the period prior to project sanction, we were all able to develop our principles and values for a smarter way of working.
These included, respect and honesty, ownership, sharing and collaboration.
"The team agrees that reminding ourselves continually of these values had helped us to achieve the high performance required".
ABB was involved in four major stages of the project: setting up and estimate preparation, front end design, building and testing the control system and installation and commissioning support.
All stages were completed over a period of three years.
For the project, ABB supplied an Advant MOD300 control system, consisting of S800 I/O modules, two AC460 controllers, one Engineering/Operator Station, two Operator Stations, one Advant Enterprise Historian and an AspenTech IP21 data gathering system.
The system provides all the control of the VTR plant, including alarm annunciation indication, calcination and vitrification control, effluent and ventilation monitoring and management reporting and has a total of 1,100 I/O points.
ABB was able to use lessons learned from the control system they had previously installed on the actual vitrification lines to develop the control for the VTR.
A related control system initiative, run under the same project management process, was the melter, part of the vitrification plant.
The melter consists of a high temperature resistant steel crucible within an electrically heated induction furnace.
This melts the waste, previously mixed with glass raw ingredients, to turn it into glass blocks.
Equipment used on this application was an Advant MOD300, two operator stations, two AC460 sub-systems and TRIO modules.
By re-using the solution from the vitrification plant project, ABB was able to deliver the Line 2 melter control system to BNFL under a fast track project, on time and to a very high standard of quality.
The Line 1 melter control system will be virtually a direct copy of Line 2.
Neil Tivey of BNFL, Senior Design Engineer and project manager for the melter project says: "The ABB solution gives us more information on what is going on in the process, allowing us to improve the quality of the final product.".
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