Reliable and proper overhead crane performance is important to ensure personnel safety, nuclear safety, and the protection of important assets such as the reactor vessel internals, the reactor pressure vessel (RPV) head, fuel assemblies, and dry fuel storage casks.

Since 2013, debris-induced fuel failures have led to declining fuel performance industrywide as addressed in INPO Event Report 19-6. Not only do these failures lead to increased fission products in the reactor coolant system (RCS),

Westinghouse, the world’s pioneering nuclear power company, supplied the world’s first commercial pressurized water reactor (PWR) in 1957 at Shippingport, Pennsylvania (USA). Today, the company is a fully integrated, worldwide supplier of both PWR and boiling water reactor (BWR) services.

The foreign material that can be captured, using the DUST, includes things like small bolts, washers, shavings, plastic tie wraps, and pieces of cloth. The suction force can be adjusted by the operator in a fully variable fashion, allowing for high precision during retrieval of debris.

Westinghouse, offers pre- and post-installation service and support for both fuel-handling and outagecritical cranes. A year-round support program, it was developed to focus on this equipment before, during, and after an outage. By targeting these areas, our procedures remain current, maintenance items are addressed quickly, spare parts are optimized, and upgrades are evaluated.

Since 1968, Westinghouse has provided premier customer-focused refueling services for hundreds of plant outages worldwide. Our vast experience is unequaled in the industry and uniquely qualifies us to offer superior services.

Westinghouse is best positioned to design and deliver customized services using resins, for various applications, on nuclear sites. Resins are highly adaptable to specific customer needs.

In today’s market, the primary focus is to “do more with less.” Utilities no longer have the luxury of keeping all functions needed to run their businesses in-house. With the deregulation of the electric utility industry and the continuous push to lower costs associated with the production of electricity, many utilities need to outsource more and more of the functions they once performed themselves to remain competitive. As the foremost nuclear service supplier, Westinghouse offers a comprehensive, costeffective solution to a utility’s long-term viability.

Westinghouse operates a state-of-the-art service center to perform tooling refurbishments to assist utilities with tooling maintenance. This service center is staffed with experienced full-time tooling engineers and technicians and has the equipment and mock-ups required to perform proper maintenance and functionality checks to maintain reliability during refueling outages.

Westinghouse has provided refueling training services for pressurized water reactor plants at its Waltz Mill site in Madison, Pennsylvania (USA), for more than 20 years. This training, conducted in the site’s D-bay, is intended for refueling senior reactor operators, fuel/insert movement technicians, site refueling coordinators and fuel equipment engineers. All of the training programs combine formal classroom instruction with handson lab exercises to maximize student learning and skills development. The refueling training facility at the Waltz Mill site includes a complete and fully operational array of actual refueling equipment identical to that found in a typical reactor containment structure.

Solving corrosion-related issues is a major challenge for the worldwide ageing fleet of nuclear power plants, looking for LTO (long-term operation). While utilities can proceed to replacements for many pipes affected by corrosion, a replacement strategy is not always possible. Other maintenance solutions are required for inaccessible or embedded pipes. Moreover, for those pipes which cannot be replaced, internal inspection and corrosion removal become an even greater technical challenge if the pipe’s diameter is small and when the remote access to the zone of interest requires to travel through bended sections and elbows.

Over decades of operation, foreign material accumulates under the spent fuel pool storage racks, creating increased dose rates and operational challenges. This material can be in the form of particulate/sludge like material as well as foreign objects. Foreign material can be disturbed by water motion caused by fuel handling and spent fuel pool filtration. Water disturbance affects pool clarity and visibility, increasing the potential for human performance issues, schedule delays, and fuel damage.

Background TENSOR™ stud tensioners provide utilities with an accurate, reliable, time-saving and costeffective way to tension and detension reactor vessel studs. The TENSOR™

The lower canopy seal Weld is a weld between the reactor vessel head control rod drive mechanism (CRDM) latch housing and the reactor vessel head (RVH) penetration adapter. This weld has a tendency to develop cracks as a result of stress corrosion cracking (SCC) and/or original weld defects. These cracks spread through the walls and create leakage.

Westinghouse has provided training services for boiling water reactor (BWR) plants since 1980. These training programs combine formal classroom instruction with hands-on lab exercises to maximize student learning and skills development