Framatome signs contract with Dominion Energy to provide fleet-wide steam generator services

• 6 years ago (2018-05-18)
• David Flin

North America 1021 Nuclear 659

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Framatome has signed a contract with Dominion Energy of the USA to provide steam generator services to the company’s entire nuclear reactor fleet. Inspection and maintenance work is scheduled to take place during eight planned outages from 2018 to 2020.

Catherine Cornand, Senior Executive Vice President of Framatome’s Installed Base Business Unit, said: “Our experts have decades of experience with steam generator inspections, which allows us to develop systems to complete these inspections more efficiently and at a lower cost to our customers. That means these facilities are back in service faster.”

Framatome will deploy Trident, its next-generation steam generator inspection system, as part of these services. This technology reduces dose and inspection time, while improving safety and human performance, through the use of robots such as Forerunner.

Forerunner is a light, mobile robot. It has spider-like movements in all working positions on horizontal or vertical tubesheets, and it is easily adaptable to different steam generator geometries. It can also calculate the optimal inspection path using an intelligent path algorithm. This can decrease inspection time by 30-50 per cent.

Framatome will service the steam generators during scheduled outages at the Millstone Power Station in Waterford, Connecticut; the North Anna Power Station in Mineral, Virginia; and the Surry Power Station in Surry, Virginia.