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Carl Rau, president of Bechtel Nuclear Power, called the latest Davis-Besse project "another opportunity to meet our customer’s expectations through our ability to deploy high quality experienced teams and our in-depth knowledge of the work."
If you’re looking for a textbook SGR project, consider Comanche Peak, a 2,300-megawatt, two-unit power plant in Glen Rose, Texas, where Bechtel replaced the four steam generators and reactor head at Unit 1. The plant’s owner, TXU, challenged us to match or beat the time of previous SGR outages, despite the fact it was more complex than comparable projects.
Following 2 ½ years of planning, the project began with the shutdown of the unit on February 24, 2007. On April 20—55 days later—the job was complete and the unit went back online, beating the previous world-record for brevity of an outage by more than a week.
On the project's first day, the worst dust storm in 20 years hit north-central Texas, darkening the sky amid winds reaching 50 miles per hour—and effectively idling most of the project’s equipment, including cranes and people lifts. When the dust settled, other challenges took center stage. The containment building at Comanche Peak is exceptionally tall at 260 feet (79 meters), and the steam generators are unusually high within the building.
