By Mike Carpenter, Vice President, Outage Services, AREVA NP
As we’re gearing up for the fall outage season, it is a good time to see how we’re building on the successes earlier this year. During the 2016 spring outage, AREVA deployed 2,561 employees to 22 nuclear plant outages, working 960,000 hours safely without an OSHA recordable event. Through the success of our customers’ outages, approximately 21 million homes are now powered with clean, reliable, nuclear energy.
We’re proud of the multiple, first-of-a-kind innovative solutions that helped our customers enhance their operations and deliver on the nuclear promise of efficient and effective power generation. In particular, our top five innovations introduced to the market collectively reduced dose and enhanced safety, quality, performance and delivery. Read the details listed below the infographic.
Cavitation Peening
AREVA executed an innovative new maintenance technique, for the first time, on the reactor vessel closure head at Unit 2 of Exelon’s Byron Generating Station in Illinois. This technique, known as cavitation peening, is designed to extend the life of nuclear reactor primary circuit components for more than 20 years and can be used on all reactor designs. AREVA received an innovation award for this technique on June 28 at the World Nuclear Exhibition in Paris.
Complex Valve Repairs
AREVA NP implemented several innovative approaches to valve repair and replacement during the spring maintenance outages at three nuclear energy facilities across the United States. These approaches involved creating custom components and solutions to meet each facility’s unique needs and requirements.
Ultrasonic Testing
AREVA completed the nuclear industry’s first non-destructive examination (NDE) of reactor vessel nozzles using a new phased array ultrasonic technique with 3-D modeling capabilities. This technique provides the most accurate way to measure flow depth if service-induced flaws are detected during periodic ultrasonic examinations of reactor vessel nozzle welds.
Reverse Engineering
Designed to replace obsolete parts, AREVA’s experts modernized the off-gas system controls by integrating digital and analog components based on the plant’s unique requirements. AREVA will transport the system to Fermi for its spring 2017 installation during a scheduled outage.
Off-Axis Flaw Detection
During a recent U.S. outage, AREVA NP demonstrated new ultrasonic testing techniques that successfully included off-axis inspection for cracks in a boiling water reactor’s core shroud welds. The new approach pairs a phased array technique and a specialized multi-axis manipulator.
