New £15.8m GlaxoSmithKline Laboratory “Completely Destroyed”

from In the Bel­ly of the Beast

Sep­tem­ber 14th, 2014

A £15 mil­lion wood­en chem­istry lab­o­ra­to­ry will con­tin­ue to burn for a fur­ther 24 hours, fire­fight­ers con­firmed today.

The Car­bon Neu­tral Lab­o­ra­to­ry for Sus­tain­able Chem­istry at Not­ting­ham Uni­ver­si­ty was destroyed after it sev­er­al fires broke out inside the state-of-the-art build­ing on Fri­day night.

The lab­o­ra­to­ry, which was part-fund­ed by a £12 mil­lion grant from phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­ny Glax­o­SmithK­line was due to open for the first time next year.

Not­ting­hamshire Fire and Res­cue Ser­vice were called to the scene at 8.30pm after res­i­dents spot­ted the blaze…

…The build­ing was designed to reach car­bon neu­tral sta­tus in 25 years to make up the ener­gy expend­ed dur­ing its con­struc­tion.

‘The Glax­o­SmithK­line Car­bon Neu­tral Lab­o­ra­to­ry for Sus­tain­able Chem­istry is a land­mark build­ing which is the embod­i­ment of the University’s com­mit­ment to sus­tain­abil­i­ty in all its forms, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the area of green chem­istry and we will be work­ing close­ly with our part­ners at GSK, and the con­trac­tors Mor­gan Sin­dall, to devel­op a pos­i­tive plan of action for rebuild­ing.’

It is not yet known what caused the blaze and a spokesper­son for NFRS said work to estab­lish the cause of the blaze can only begin ful­ly once the fire is entire­ly out.

 

source: the dai­ly heil

No-one was injured and no oth­er build­ings were affect­ed

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