The transport operation required the containment liner to be moved 432 nautical miles from Gdynia in Poland to the Olkiluoto Nuclear Power Plant in Finland. Coupled with its transport substructure, the load totalled 350t and reached 15m high. The domed containment liner is 47m in diameter.
The power station is the world’s first third-generation pressurised water reactor to be built, and will produce around 1,600MW. Babcock Noell said this makes it one of the world’s most powerful, with improved standards of safety. It is scheduled to enter commercial operation in 2012 alongside two existing power station blocks.
Babcock Noell, which works in the nuclear service, nuclear technology, magnet technology and environmental technology sectors, used a pontoon to float the containment liner from Poland to Finland. The 73m-long, 24.5m-wide pontoon Viiru was used for the transport, meaning the width of the load was some 22m wider than the pontoon itself; almost double the width of Viiru.
Once it had reached Finland, a 1,250t capacity Terex CC6800 crawler crane, on hire from Finnish lifting services firm Havator, was drafted in to unload the containment liner from the pontoon and transport substructure, carefully moving it to its pre-assembly location in a 10- hour operation. The crane was equipped with SSL configuration and a 72m main boom.
Babcock Noell said a second crane on hire from Sarens is to be used to complete the installation process on site. The containment was scheduled for completion by the end of August.
The containment liner is part of a EUR17m (USD24m) contract for Babcock Noell from Areva NP, which is building the reactor on behalf of Finnish power utility Teollisuuden Voima Oy. Other elements of the contract include airlocks for the reactor building, which facilitate access with maintenance of the tight conditions to the outside; a pool liner for the fuel element and reactor pool, with high demands on tightness for the whole period of operation (designed for 60 years); components for the RPV closure head equipment; components of the core melt stabilisation system; and various other engineering orders and supplies of small parts.
