Ma­jor sur­face pro­tec­tion works at new nuc­lear power sta­tion

As sur­face pro­tec­tion spe­cial­ists at Tier 2 on Hinkley Point C, we know there’s more to watch­ing paint dry than the say­ing sug­gests.

The as­sembly and in­stall­a­tion works on the in­ner con­tain­ment liner for both Unit 1 and Unit 2 have been a ma­jor fo­cus of this year’s con­struc­tion at HPC. And mak­ing sure each struc­ture is prop­erly pro­tec­ted from the ele­ments is just as cru­cial for the safety and in­teg­rity of the build.

Inner containment liner

The steel in­ner con­tain­ment liner forms the cyl­in­der struc­ture of the main re­actor. It’s be­ing con­struc­ted in five parts: the Liner Cup at the bot­tom, fol­lowed by three cyl­indrical rings and then the dome sit­ting on top. The Liner Cup weighs 170 tonnes, and has a dia­meter of more than 50m. Each of the in­ner con­tain­ment rings is around 20m high.

Sur­face pro­tec­tion works to coat the Liner Cup in Unit 2 began in Au­gust. Get­ting to the point of start­ing the works on Site was the first big mile­stone for our team on site.

Tre­vor Wood­ward, our Busi­ness and Strategy Dir­ector, said: “The sur­face pro­tec­tion is ap­plied as a crit­ical part of the nuc­lear safety sys­tem. The tech­nical pro­cess has in­volved a high level of qual­ity as­sur­ance, in­spec­tions and strin­gent health, safety and en­vir­on­mental as­sess­ment, so it’s def­in­itely been a long jour­ney to get to the point of ap­ply­ing paint. We have to thank all the KAEFER team again for their ef­forts so far.”

Careful planning and collaboration

The team star­ted the paint­ing works in Bunker 5, where Unit 2’s Liner Cup has been pre-as­sembled. The KAEFER team has worked closely with Bylor, Tis­sot and EDF over the past 12 months to plan the spe­cial­ist coat­ing works around the as­sembly stages.

The pro­cesses for ap­plic­a­tion of the spe­cial­ist paint sys­tems were de­veloped in close col­lab­or­a­tion with the Qual­ity and En­vir­on­ment teams. The works in­cluded mock-ups of the Liner sec­tions, so that the ma­ter­i­als could be ac­cur­ately tested dur­ing and after the cur­ing pro­cess.

Safe and effective delivery

We de­signed spe­cial­ist ac­cess and cli­mate con­trolled con­tain­ment sys­tems with our Scaf­fold­ing, Ac­cess and Res­cue teams, which is also cru­cial to en­sure the safe and ef­fect­ive de­liv­ery of the blast­ing and paint­ing works.

Our team will go on to paint Unit 1’s Liner Cup in situ on the first Re­actor Build­ing, as well as the re­main­ing three con­tain­ment rings and domes for each unit after they’re as­sembled in Bunkers 5 and 6.

Tre­vor ad­ded: “This is a com­plex and chal­len­ging pro­ject and this is why it’s crit­ical that we are a learn­ing or­gan­isa­tion. At each stage we cap­ture re­turn on ex­per­i­ence and make con­tinu­ous im­prove­ments to our pro­ced­ures and co-or­din­a­tion pro­cesses.

“It’s a rare priv­ilege to work on a build of such scale and mag­nitude as HPC. The pro­ject ap­proach is ideally suited to our KAEFER LEAN cul­ture. We want to do everything we can to help the Pro­ject achieve its mile­stones and re­duce time spent on all activ­it­ies, but es­pe­cially fo­cus­ing now on these works on the path to Dome Lift.”