Product category:
Plant Design and Construction
News Release from: Corus Northern Engineering Services | Subject: CPS Calder Hall lifting girdles
Edited by the Processingtalk Editorial
Team on 24 June 2008
Lifting girdles for largest nuclear lift
in the UK
Corus Process Engineering has manufactured and assembled two 6m dia steel lifting girdles to remove the 400-tonne heat exchangers from the reactors at Calder Hall nuclear plant in Cumbria.
Each reactor has four vertically mounted heat exchangers These are located externally to the reactor building and were clad for insulation and weather protection
This article was originally published on Processingtalk on 2 Jul 2008 at 8.00am (UK)
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The heat exchangers weigh around 400 tonnes and measure 27m in length, with a diameter of 5.5m.
This will represent the largest ever lift in the UK nuclear industry.
CPE, part of Corus Northern Engineering Services (CNES), delivered the lifting girdles to its customer Nuvia (formerly NUKEM Limited) at the end of February 2008.
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Nuvia is one of several contractors chosen by Sellafield to decommission the Calder Hall site.
Part of the Nuvia responsibility was to design lifting girdles and cradles to enable the heat exchangers to be lifted and transported a lay down area.
To do this two lifting girdles were required to lift and tail the vessels, which is where the CPE fabrication and machining expertise came in.
The lifting girdles were manufactured and assembled at the CNES Structural Workshops in Scunthorpe between August 2007 and February 2008.
Materials relating to the project were bought from Corus Construction and Industrial.
The manufacturing process for the carbon steel girdles involved profile cutting and rolling the circular shapes, machining and welding (flux cored arc welding) the interfaces between the two girdle halves, assembly, stress relieving, finish machining, painting and delivery.
Machining was carried out at the CNES Scunthorpe machine shop using a large horizontal boring machine.
CPE also had to construct spider structures to brace the two halves of the girdle during fabrication.
Each half has a trunnion fitted at 90degrees to the joint face, this necessitated boring a hole in the fabrication, manufacturing and fitting the trunnion to the required tolerance..
The girdles were then stress relieved and finish machined on the joint faces.
The fitted bolts used to fasten the two halves together measured almost one metre in length with a diameter of 115mm.
The units were inspected and painted prior to delivery to Nuvia.
Steve Snowden, Production Control Engineer at the CNES Structural Workshops commented: "Nuvia selected CPE because it trusted us and felt confident that we possessed the necessary technical expertise to carry out the job.
We could also handle the front-end engineering that was required, plus provide all the traceability, method statements and other quality assurance-related factors that were key to the project.
We also understand all the health and safety related regulations that are always our highest priority and we have the necessary fabrication, machining and surface treatment expertise to carry out the work to the required standards".
For more information on Corus Process Engineering, please contact David Scatchard at CNES. Request a free brochure from Corus Northern Engineering Services ...
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