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Every mm counts – Scaf­fold mod­el­ling brought to per­fec­tion | KAEFER UK & Ireland
Each meas­ur­ing a sub­stan­tial 47m across and stretch­ing 65m high, the two Nuc­lear Is­land in­ner con­tain­ment liners be­ing built at Hinkley Point C have a total com­bined in­ternal sur­face area of ap­prox­im­ately 26,000m2. That's a lot of steel to coat.
KAEFER, KAEFER UK & Ireland, KAEFER UK and Ireland, Industrial Services, KAEFER Group, Scaffold, Scaffold Design, scaffolding, Innovation, Protective coatings, HPC, Hinkley Point C, Nuclear New Build
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Every mm counts – Scaf­fold mod­el­ling brought to per­fec­tion

Home / 2021  / Every mm counts – Scaf­fold mod­el­ling brought to per­fec­tion

Every mm counts – Scaf­fold mod­el­ling brought to per­fec­tion

Each meas­ur­ing a sub­stan­tial 47m across and stretch­ing 65m high, the two Nuc­lear Is­land in­ner con­tain­ment liners be­ing built at Hinkley Point C have a total com­bined in­ternal sur­face area of ap­prox­im­ately 26,000m2. That’s a lot of steel to coat.

In­dus­trial as­set pro­tec­tion spe­cial­ist KAEFER is re­spons­ible for de­liv­er­ing the Liner Coat­ing Pack­age for the Hinkley Point C Pro­ject. This in­volves the paint­ing of in­ternal sur­faces of both nuc­lear re­act­ors, in­clud­ing provid­ing the ne­ces­sary ac­cess to un­der­take the op­er­a­tions: over 171 tonnes of scaf­fold­ing!

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Both con­tain­ment liners are made up of five com­pon­ents: a cup at the base, three sep­ar­ate rings then topped off with a dome. KAEFER iden­ti­fied an op­por­tun­ity to con­struct the scaf­fold­ing on site be­fore each steel com­pon­ent was lif­ted into po­s­i­tion. “Our en­gin­eers worked closely with the sites main civil en­gin­eer­ing works con­tractor, Bylor, and its en­gin­eers loc­ated in Paris, to make sure the design was com­pat­ible with the lift­ing para­met­ers,” ex­plained Thomas Hurst, KAE­FER’s Tem­por­ary Works Co­ordin­ator and De­signer for the Hinkley Point C site. “This en­sured the design was re­vised and ac­cep­ted within only two weeks of be­ing in­struc­ted. Our ini­ti­at­ive means that the scaf­fold can re­main in place for sub­sequent liners, fur­ther re­du­cing costs and pro­gramme for the cli­ents.”

The suc­cess­ful use of 5D BIM tech­no­logy al­lowed KAEFER to design and build the 44m ra­dial scaf­fold to just 100mm safety factor. In com­bin­a­tion with the latest sur­vey­ing tech­no­logy, the team was able to base the scaf­fold ac­cur­ately to 5mm, al­low­ing for the 100mm factor of safety to be per­fectly main­tained.

The seam­less in­teg­ra­tion of KAE­FER’s scaf­fold design and op­er­a­tional teams en­sured that a suit­able solu­tion was de­veloped for the cli­ent from the start. Scaf­fold build op­er­a­tions were also ac­cel­er­ated by design­ing the but­tresses of the scaf­fold to be used as load­ing bays. This al­lowed for the scaf­fold equip­ment to be lif­ted onto the work­ing lifts by crane, re­du­cing manual hand­ling and pro­gramme time.

Image of Liner 2 being lifted onto the KAEFER scaffold

The liner com­pon­ents are con­struc­ted in rings in an ad­ja­cent bunker. When built, the liner ring is lif­ted over the erec­ted scaf­fold onto the work­ing plat­form where KAEFER teams coat the in­ternal sur­faces. Once paint­ing is com­plete the liner rings are then lif­ted into place in the re­actor.

“We were able to de­velop the design to mm ac­cur­acy and in­stantly share the 3D mod­els with the cli­ent to en­able the solu­tion to sat­isfy both KAEFER and Bylor’s op­er­a­tional re­quire­ments,” said Thomas. “This al­lowed the cli­ent’s crit­ical path lift op­er­a­tions a greater wind tol­er­ance, fur­ther re­du­cing the risk to site and the pro­ject to achieve these crit­ical path mile­stones. Work­ing with KAE­FER’s op­er­a­tions team we were able to identify and im­ple­ment build op­por­tun­it­ies which al­lowed the pro­ject to be de­livered safely and ahead of sched­ule.”