New vessel head delivered to Tihange unit

Wednesday, 25 March 2015

Areva has delivered a replacement reactor vessel head for unit 3 of Electrabel's Tihange nuclear power plant in Belgium. The company has also been awarded a contract to supply a new vessel head to a US utility.

The replacement vessel head for Tihange 3 (Image: Areva)

The vessel head - weighing over 60 tonnes - was manufactured at Areva's Le Creusot facility in Burgundy and then assembled and welded at its Chalon Saint-Marcel plant. It left Chalon Saint-Marcel on 26 January and was transported 800 kilometres by road to the Tihange plant, arriving on 16 March.

The control rod drive mechanisms - which were manufactured at Areva's Jeumont plant - have since been welded onto the stainless steel vessel head on site.

The new head will be installed at Tihange 3 during a forthcoming planned maintenance outage. Areva workers will mount the assembled head onto the reactor vessel after it has been loaded into the reactor building.

Verification and inspection of the new vessel head will then be conducted.

The vessel head serves as a protective barrier to the fuel located in the pressure vessel. It features openings for the control rod drive mechanisms to pass in order to control and regulate the nuclear reaction as part of electricity generation.

Areva's director of heavy equipment production Patrick Poret said, "The delivery of the reactor vessel head to the Tihange nuclear power plant is an important milestone for this project and marks the culmination of over three years of work by the teams to meet the requirements of our customer Electrabel."

The company also said it has been awarded a multi-million dollar contract to supply a replacement reactor vessel head to an undisclosed US utility. As part of the contract, Areva will also supply control rod drive mechanisms.

The components will be delivered to the USA in early 2018.

Researched and written
by World Nuclear News