900 Ton Containment Vessel Bottom Head Installed At Vogtle 3

Yesterday, Georgia Power announced that they successfully lifted the first part of the Vogtle Unit 3 containment vessel into place. From World Nuclear News: "The component — measuring almost 40 meters wide, 12 meters tall and weighing over 900 tons — was assembled on-site from pre-fabricated steel plates. The cradle for the containment vessel was put in place on the unit's nuclear island in April. The completed bottom head was raised by a heavy lift derrick and placed on the cradle on 1 June, Georgia Power announced." Georgia Power has a pretty cool gallery of high resolution construction photos (the bottom head is the background on my XBMC machine). Below the fold there is a video of the crane moving the bottom head into place.

Comments

Re:Crane

[Antipater]

/highfive

As someone who works on cranes myself, I was more interested in the lift than in the actual thing being constructed. Got any specs on that sheerleg? It looks like a monster. My eyes aren't good enough to count the number of falls, but just the boom structure has me ballparking its capacity at what, 2000 tons?

Re:Bottom head?

[firewrought]

Unit 3 means it is the third reactor in the power plant. Vogtle is the name of the power plant (probably the name of the place it is located in). Apparently there are already 2 units installed there with Generation II reactors and they are now in the process of construction another two units with Generation III reactors of the Westinghouse AP1000 design.

Vogtle was President/Chairman of Southern Company, Georgia Power's parent company. (Southern tends to name most of their plants after company bigwigs.) Apparently, he was a real POW who inspired the motorcycle dude in The Great Escape.