The Box Encapsulation Plant Product Store Direct Import Facility (BEPPS-DIF) site, like much of our construction work, is paused work due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

From the moment construction work paused, we knew that people would return at some point, and we knew that we wanted them to be safe.

So throughout April and into May ahead of the beginning of a phased restart on 11 May, BEPPS-DIF has been piloting the new measures of all our projects we’ll need to have in place once work starts in the “new normal”.

This includes:

• stringent social distancing measures
• increased cleaning regimes
• reinforcing hand washing rules
• changes to travel to and from worksites
• extra supervision
• additional risk assessments
• new signage

It’s already brought a visible change to the way the BEPPS-DIF site looks – there are distancing marks on the floors, parts of buildings have been cordoned off, and new one-way systems have been introduced.

Every part of the working day has been thought of – from the car parking, welfare such as canteens and toilets. The entire site has been reorganised to ensure employees can maintain distance from their colleagues.

Sellafield Ltd’s Head of Projects Steve Harnwell, said:

We’ve been working with our supply chain colleagues who have collaborated and generously shared their approach, as well as linking in with trade unions, and we feel we’re fully in-line with best practices deployed throughout the UK.

The most important thing is to keep our workforce safe, and these measures will help do this. The next step is to roll out these measures across all our major projects, and when we recommence some projects we will review to learn from their use and incorporate improvement if required.

We will be regularly reviewing all measures put in place, including those on BEPPS-DIF and other projects and other areas of site and our offsite offices.

Any measures brought in will depend on what is appropriate, practical and possible in differing spaces, but the overriding driver will be to keep the workforce safe.

The BEPPS-DIF site isn’t quiet this week – a few people returned to work on Monday to ensure everything is ready for the people who will be attending starting from next week.

Since the middle of March, when the coronarvius (COVID-19) pandemic was declared by the World Health Organisation (WHO), the British Embassy Santiago has been almost entirely focused on managing the health crisis.

Our main work at the start of the pandemic was helping British nationals in Chile, both on cruise ships and on land, who had emergency needs arising from the crisis. Before international flights were completely cancelled in mid-April, we worked with the Chilean authorities to ensure that British nationals could leave the country without difficulties and to help people in remote areas to get to Santiago for their flights.

We believe that nearly all of the 3,000 or so British visitors who were in Chile in mid March are now safely back in the UK. However, we will continue to work tirelessly to help those who are still in Chile.

Another part of our work has been to support British nationals who were visiting Chile and contracted COVID-19. We have had five cases – four of which were people on cruise ships – including 3 who were hospitalised. Throughout their weeks in Chile we remained in close contact with them, their respective hospitals, insurers, and families back in the UK. All have now returned to the UK.

The UK and Chile working together

In the rush of handling the immediate health crisis, it can be hard to make time to take a longer term view. However, Chile and the UK, like all other countries in the world, are going to suffer serious economic damage as a result of the virus. Therefore, a powerful and co-ordinated economic response is vital to reduce the negative economic impact of the pandemic.

Chile is one of the UK’s key trade and investment partners in Latin America, a country which shares the UK’s belief in the importance of free trade and a fellow member of the OECD. We will be working closely together in the coming months over our responses to the economic consequences of the pandemic.

We will also be seeking not only to restore trade to its pre-COVID-19 levels, but to increase it. In this way we can help restore the economies of both the UK and Chile. Also, both countries are committed to global responses to the current health crisis, including the scope for collaboration on the area of vaccines.

The UK’s international response

As in other British embassies overseas, the UK has been combining our support for British citizens with a three-pronged approach to respond to COVID-19:

• firstly, supporting the global health response and in particular the most vulnerable countries. The UK has pledged £744 million through aid funding including support for the WHO (£65 million), Red Cross (£50 million) and UNICEF (£25 million). This includes sending experts and sharing medical supplies to prevent the spread of the disease and support hospitals and medical workers stretched to their limit around the world

• secondly, the UK is leading on international efforts to find a vaccine. We have contributed £250 million to the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), the largest national contributor to this global initiative to develop new vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics. The UK will also host the Global Vaccine Summit in June 2020. In addition to tackling COVID-19, it remains vital that programmes against other diseases such as AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria continue

• the final strand is to protect the international economy – as it would be a high cost to pay if we beat the virus but were to lose yet more lives to increased poverty and the loss of global supply chains for essential goods like food and medicines

Further information

For more information about the British Embassy in Chile, follow us on:

The money has been granted to Anglesey County Council to support the community during the coronavirus pandemic.

The council plans to invest the money into provisions for Amlwch Foodbank and the ‘Neges’ food distribution project. It will also buy 3D printers for Ysgol Syr Thomas Jones to make protective visors for key workers and volunteers.

The funding forms part of the 12 grants, worth £300,000 in total, Magnox has made available to local authorities or charities where a Magnox site is located.

Gwen Parry-Jones, Magnox Chief Executive, said:

Many community groups are carrying out positive work, supporting the most vulnerable in their areas. This work is vital, and a key part of Magnox’s response to COVID-19 is to help other organisations deal with the pandemic wherever we can.

In this time of national crisis, Magnox has agreed with the NDA that we should make available up to £25,000 at each site from the Magnox Socio-economic Scheme for use by local community groups on COVID-19 related activities. Magnox is committed to assisting the communities surrounding our sites, as our communities have supported us for over 50 years, and we hope this funding will go some way to supporting the essential work being delivered.

Anglesey County Council Leader and Talybolion county councillor, Llinos Medi, added: “We’re extremely grateful to Magnox and the NDA for this funding which will help support vulnerable residents and communities across north Anglesey during these unprecedented and difficult times.”

“The funding will, of course, be put to good use as we work with community partners and volunteers to ensure local communities are as resilient as possible in light of this terrible Coronavirus pandemic.

“Whilst this funding will help north Anglesey, the County Council will also make every effort to ensure there is similar provision in other parts of the Island, to ensure parity.”

Chair of Wylfa’s Site Stakeholder Group and Councillor for the Twrcelyn Ward, Aled Morris Jones, added: “What Magnox and the NDA have done to support communities, financially and through provision of equipment, is very generous. That staff have given of their time to volunteer to assist in their communities is inspirational. It shows the nuclear family coming together to support each other. We will beat this virus together and we will all meet again in happier times.”

With permission Mr Speaker, I would like to update the House on the UK’s support for the global effort to tackle the coronavirus pandemic.

The world is now having to address the biggest threat that it has faced in decades: an invisible killer on a global scale.

Here in the UK, communities across the country are united in their determination to beat it – making their own personal sacrifices by staying at home, protecting our NHS and saving lives.

There is a daunting outlook for countries in the developing world: simultaneously facing a health crisis, a humanitarian crisis and the risk of a protracted economic crisis leading to much greater hardship for years to come.

The threat of famines, exacerbated by the worst locust plague for 70 years, fragile healthcare systems that enable the spread of the disease and economic disruptions risk a much longer and harder road back to recovery than for wealthy countries.

However, through the altruism of the British people and the expertise of our scientists and engineers, the UK is proudly playing a leading role in the global response.

On Monday, together with other world leaders, my Right Honourable Friend, the Prime Minister, co-hosted a virtual Global Coronavirus Response Pledging Conference.

He called on countries around the world to step up their efforts and work together on this, the “most urgent shared endeavour of our lifetimes”.

World leaders responded and some £6.5 billion was pledged for the Covid-19 response, including the UK’s own £388 million commitment for vaccines, tests and treatments.

The UK is proud to stand with our international partners – this is a truly global effort and the only way to fight this pandemic is together.

Scientific Response

Mr Speaker, so the UK is an international development superpower, and we are also a scientific and medical world leader. This enables our response to this global pandemic to be greater than the sum of its parts.

From Gloucestershire’s Dr Jenner, who laid the foundations for immunology, to our researchers who developed vaccines for measles and Ebola, the UK has led the scientific response to many global health challenges in the past.

And I am so proud to say that UK-based scientists, such as those at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine are playing key roles in the global response to this deadly new virus.

Scientists in Bedfordshire who developed rapid diagnostic devices to manage the recent Ebola outbreak funded with taxpayers’ money through UK AID, are using that expertise to develop new rapid diagnostic tests.

Researchers at Oxford University, funded through CEPI, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, are now progressing to clinical trials with funding from the UK government’s Vaccines Taskforce – which is also funding a vaccine trial starting soon at Imperial College.

In partnership with a British success story, AstraZeneca – one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies – our Oxford researchers are working towards their vaccine being manufactured at scale.

But we know that any vaccine might prove to be the solution, so through our DFID aid budget, the UK is the largest single contributor by any country to CEPI’s international efforts to find a vaccine. Through this fund, we are working to improve our understanding of the virus and to support scientists around the globe – CEPI is already backing nine potential vaccines.

Mr Speaker, the Foreign Secretary outlined at the launch of the WHO “Access to Covid-19 Tools” Accelerator, that the UK is proud to work with our international partners to ensure new vaccines are accessible to everyone and quickly as possible.

No one will be safe until we are all safe, Mr Speaker. So we will need vaccines against this deadly disease, at home and abroad.

Once a vaccine is found, delivering it globally will be the next big challenge. To help that, we have invested the equivalent of £330 million a year for the next five years in Gavi, the global vaccine alliance that delivers vaccines in 68 of the poorest countries around the world.

And on 4 June the UK will be hosting the Global Vaccines Summit to co-ordinate international investment efforts for Gavi.

Together with the announcement made by the Prime Minister on Monday, that is a combined additional investment in global health security that comes to more than £2 billion – helping combat the spread of this disease.

In investing globally, we are helping to protect our citizens, our families from future waves of infection, and therefore protecting our NHS.

DFID response

The global pandemic is one part of the challenge facing the world. DFID’s immediate Coronavirus response to date amounts to £744 million. But this is on top of our work to pivot much of our existing activity to provide health, humanitarian and economic support where it is needed most – as part of our response to these crises.

A health response that builds on the UK’s longstanding record of supporting countries to prepare for and respond to large disease outbreaks, including as the third largest donor to the World Health Organisation.

Investing on the frontier of research into new rapid diagnostics and therapeutics that can detect and treat coronavirus.

Working in partnership with Unilever, we’ve launched an innovative handwashing campaign that will reach a billion people around the world. A major contribution to global sanitation and hygiene.

With the support of British and international NGOs, and advice from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, we will reach 1 in 7 people around the world with information on the most effective ways to stop the virus spreading and therefore to save lives.

Economic response

We are also working to reduce the global economic impact of the virus by preventing its spread, protecting both the UK public and the stability of our economy.

Last month, the UK together with other G20 countries announced a commitment to suspend debt service payments to the poorest countries until the end of 2020. This will create up to $12 billion of additional fiscal space.

DFID has also made available up to £150 million to the International Monetary Fund for debt relief.

These measures will enable developing countries to direct greater domestic resources to their own healthcare efforts, helping prevent the virus from spreading around the world.

So, we are supporting developing country governments to make proportionate, evidence-based trade-offs between containing the virus and maintaining open trade. So that essential goods and services, including critical medical and food supplies, can continue to move around the world.

That supports developing countries, but it also means that British consumers get the vital goods they need.

Mr Speaker…

COVID-19 is a global pandemic. It does not respect national borders. Individual efforts will only succeed as part of a global response.

The UK has been playing – and will continue to play – a leading role in galvanising the most effective co-ordinated international action.

In 2017, the scientific community in the UK proudly played a key role in the international response to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. I am proud to update the House that we are doing so again.

We are using British expertise and funding to demonstrate leadership internationally. Recognising the needs will be great, we are doing whatever it takes to make sure vaccines, treatments, and technologies are available, to save lives and support economies in the most vulnerable countries to help end the pandemic.

This will help reduce the risk of the world being attacked by a second wave of infection.

So, as the Prime Minister said on Monday, it’s humanity against the virus. We are in this together and only together we will prevail.

I commend this statement to the House.

When it comes to decommissioning our legacy facilities, having the right information is vital. We have drawings and data sheets, but often these are out of date and could be misleading.

Site walk-arounds and up-to-date measurements are vital, but what if you can’t access the site you’re working on?

That was the problem facing the team working on our iconic “golf ball” facility, the Windscale Advanced Gas-cooled Reactor.

They were due to have just such a walk-around at the end of March, but had to cancel it when the nationwide lockdown hit. With the team needing accurate information to work from home, they hit on a novel solution to getting it.

A full scanning team couldn’t gain access to the site, but there were people going in for routine maintenance. The question was – could they do the work and get the detail needed?

And the answer was – yes, with partners from our Decommissioning Delivery Partnership (DDP) coming together to develop a solution.

Darren Grears from Atkins Global explained:

We decided to capture data using 2 devices – a handheld laser scanner and a 360-degree camera.

The scanner can get information up to about 10mm accuracy and is capable of scanning a 3 storey car park in less than 30 minutes. The camera can capture images to simulate a walk-around.

Working with specially-developed user guides, a maintenance team completed the scans and video during an inspection in March, taking 116 images and performing 2 laser scans of the entire building in under 2 hours.

The scans and footage gathered will now be used to guide the removal, cleaning and painting of cladding from the building, which will extend its life and ensure it is safe.

Darren added:

This is about ‘bringing the site home’. Before we can do any work, we need to identify the location of services and assets, look at potential areas for the temporary work enclosure, determine distances between adjacent buildings, scope out space for crane access and generally make sure the access is sufficient.

This will all feed into the concept design for the project and the type of temporary works enclosure required.

DDP Programme Manager Simon Martin said:

This has been a great example of people coming together to find a solution in a time of change and uncertainty. By engaging with our partners in the supply chain we were able to find a solution which has put the project back on track.