Chernobyl New Safe Confinement project – Steel arch permanent bearing

The New Safe Confinement (NSC) is a design and build project, first of its kind in the nuclear field engineering. Never before such an important structure has been constructed in severe and difficult site conditions with high risk of radiation. The NSC is a steel arch, under construction by NOVARKA (JV Vinci Construction and Bouygues Construction), destined to contain the remains of the No. 4 unit at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant near Pripyat, Ukraine, which was destroyed during the Chernobyl nuclear accident in 1986. The steel arch is linked to a concrete foundation with 31 spherical bearings (TETRON SB®) designed and supplied by Freyssinet. These bearing have been designed under the European Standard, however, the Ukrainian Standard has also been covered.

This paper describes the design, fabrication and tests of the spherical bearings, focusing on the main aspects related to the exceptional service environment (such as radiation and temperature), the impact on the constitutive materials and the bearing capacity.