African Fusion AUgust 2016

SAIW’s Sean Blake visits France

AFRICAN FUSION

August 2016

ollowing a visit by a French del-

egation to the SAIW facility in

February 2016, an invitation was

extended by Areva to visit its Heavy

Equipment Manufacturing facility in St

Marcel – Chalon, France. This facility

was opened in 1976 and some of the

components for the Koeberg Nuclear

Power station were built in that facility.

The facility primarily manufactures the

steam generators for Areva’s 3

genera-

tion EPR nuclear power plant.

Some of the components for the

Koeberg steam generator replacement

project may also be manufactured in

the facility with the balance planned for

manufacture in an Arevamanufacturing

facility in China. I took the opportunity

to visit this facility in conjunction with

IIW meetings scheduled for May 25 and

26 in Gent, Belgium for the IIW Inspector

working group.

During discussions with Areva per-

sonnel, they suggested that I could

also visit the Alstom Transport site in Le

Creusot, which is a short driveaway from

Chalon. The Alstom Transport facility

is in the process of building bogies for

PRASA and is the technology partner for

Gibela, which is currently establishing a

manufacturing facility inDunnotar, Nigel

for the local manufacture of passenger

rail vehicles.

AREVA Heavy Equipment

The fabrication facility is composed of

four bays, an ancillary bay for support

activities including welder training, a

light bay with capacity for up to 50 t,

a medium bay for up to 350 tons; and

a heavy bay for fabrications of up to

1 000 tons. The facility employs 364

operators of which 62 are boilermakers,

80 arewelders, with 348 technicians and

205managers and engineers. Due to the

nature and quality requirements of the

products manufactured at this facility,

there is a high ratio of engineers and

technicians tooperators. Quality control

and engineering are key factors in this

operation with a ratio of one manufac-

turing hour for each engineering hour.

Manufacturing methods have been

studied and developed specifically

for the Areva activities and have been

developed over a period if more than

30 years. The drilling and broaching

process is a key example of this, where

tubes sheets of up to 600 mm thick are

drilled and broached to an accuracy of

0.01 mm. A matching sample is kept

of every tube sheet bored as a quality

control requirement.

Owing to Koeberg being built by

Framatome (a predecessor of Areva), a

closeworking relationship ismaintained

between Eskom and the French power

consortium of Areva and EDF.

All assembly operations are con-

ducted in clean rooms. Unfortunately,

due to the cleanliness requirements and

rules of the facility, I was not able to en-

ter the assembly area, however, I could

view the operation from the outside

through a glass window. The assembly

is carefully controlledwith each itembe-

ing identified andweighedwithmultiple

checks to ensure proper assembly.

SAIW executive director

Sean Blake

shares experiences of

his visit to France, where he toured the Chalon Saint-Marcel

manufacturing plant of ArevaHeavy Equipment before visiting

Alstom Transport in Le Creusot.

Nuclear and railway fabrication:

the

Within the facility, there is awelding

technology department, which is work-

ing on a number of new welding devel-

opments, including developingwelding

processes for the ITER Tokamak nuclear

fusion project. They are also working

on powder metallurgy solutions using

Hot Isostatic Pressing (HIP) technolo-

gies as well as the joining of a stainless

steel/copper and beryllium composite

for water cooling for this project. The

development group is also working

on GMAW welding techniques as well

as the automatic feed of filler material

for GTAW welding in order to improve

productivity and automation.

Within the facility they have awelder

training and testing facility, which is

manned with training instructors and

welding management. For a welder to

work on the nuclear components, a

minimumof 10 years training and expe-

rience is required.

Interestingly, Areva is using elec-

troslag welding as a weld build-up and

cladding technique. The process is pre-

ferred for some applications due to the

lowdilution achieved. Within the facility

they are also using robotic GMAWweld-

ing as a cladding process. Polysoude’s

TIGer (TIG with and electric resistance/

hot wire feed) is utilised in order to im-

prove productivity.

The facility has a second welder

training facility that is remote from

the manufacturing facility. Within this

facility there are two welding bays with

simulated environments wherewelders

are trained and tested in a temperature

and humidity controlled working envi-

ronment with jigs for restricted access.

Much of this second welder training

facilitywas dedicated to the use of auto-

matedwelding techniques with training

and development of narrow-gap orbital