Electricite de France has completed the biggest single pour of concrete
in Britain at the site of a new nuclear power plant at Hinkley Point in
Somerset.
The utility poured 9 000 m3 of the material at Hinkley Point,
exceeding the amount of concrete that went into the Shard skyscraper in London.
It was reinforced by 5 000 t of steel built into a nest 4 m high that will
serve as the base of the first new reactor in the UK since 1995.
The announcement marks completion of the first part of construction work
at the Hinkley Point C project, allowing erection of the facilities above
ground to begin. That leaves the £19.6-billion plant on track to start
generating electricity within six years, producing enough energy to supply six
million homes.
“This is a huge achievement for Hinkley Point C and a major milestone
for the UK’s nuclear industry,” said Andrew Stephenson, the UK government
minister in charge of nuclear power at the Department for Business, Energy and
Industrial Strategy.
The scale of the new Hinkley plant makes it the biggest engineering
project in the UK by far. It will cost more than the Channel Tummel, use enough
steel for a railway from London to Rome and require enough concrete to build 75
sports stadiums.
The company built facilities to mix concrete at the site 1 1/2 years
before they were needed to perfect the mix design to ensure no cracking.
Reinforcement bars were laid no more than 2 cm askew from the plan submitted to
regulators.
Other concrete structures at the site include two 7-m-diameter tunnels
to the sea, drilled by the machines that worked on London’s new Crossrail line.
Those will bring water to cool the reactors, capable of filling an Olympic
swimming pool in 20 seconds.
Bouygues SA and Laing O’Rourke Plc are working on the
base. Framatome SA is forging the pressure vessel and steam
generators that will form the heart of the reactor base just finished. Sarens
NV is putting together the world’s biggest crane at the site to aid the
construction at a later stage.
EDF said the project currently employs 4,000 people, including 430
apprentices. Another 8,500 have been trained to work at the site.
EDF and its partner, China General Nuclear Power Corp., signed final
contracts with the UK government in September 2016. Those call for the plant to
earn £92.50 for every megawatt-hour of electricity it produces, almost double
the average market rate of £56 over the past year.
Britain currently gets about 8.9 GW from 15 nuclear reactors, and about
half that capacity is due to close by 2025, according to the World Nuclear
Association. That power represents about a fifth of UK power supply.
The last plant to be completed was the Sizewell B unit in 1995. It’s scheduled to keep working until 2035. https://www.engineeringnews.co.za/article/biggest-concrete-pour-in-uk-history-completed-at-nuclear-plant-site-2019-06-28/rep_id:4136
