Trial assembly for Chernobyl’s safe confinement

25 April 2012 - New contracts - Italy

An important stage in the project to produce a safe confinement for the Chernobyl sarcophagus, being undertaken on a design-build basis by Novarka (a consortium composed 50/50 of VINCI Construction Grands Projets, leader, and Bouygues Travaux Publics), was completed in March 2012, in Italy, at the site of Cimolai, which is supplying the elements of the arch. Elements of the upper part of the steel confinement were assembled, in the course of a “dry run”, in order to ensure they fitted together before being painted and sent to Ukraine. Reminder: the arch (23,000 t; height:108 m; length:162 m) will be erected in a specially developed zone to the west of the destroyed reactor before being slid over the existing sarcophagus.