The HTGR, (unit 1) at Peach Bottom Pa with its ornamental steel containment vessel was almost a
vessel failure. The original design for the containment vessel was for a straight wall vessel up to the dome.If you can find some pictures of the completed vessel, you will see that it has many horizontal rings with stiffeners all the way to the dome. Those horizontal rings are heavy
T-beams with vertical stiffeners welded in between. The 'plan of attack' was for CBI to erect some rings and then leave. The main contractor,B ,would get work done inside the rings and outside the rings up to some predetermined point and then call CBI back to erect some more rings. This continued until the containment was about half way done. Now 'B' was pouring concrete inside and outside the rings. Well, one day, the 'B' inspector saw that the containment
was getting some large buckles in it. These buckles were so bad that he took a picture of one of the buckles while an associate held a very long straight edge against a ring. The st. edge was tangent at the top and the bottom but in between their was a buckle large enough you could almost reach thru and shake hands. Well needless to say, CBI said it was 'Bs' fault because of the concrete pours etc. 'B' said it was CBI's fault. I don't know who was at fault but the 'fix' was to erect and weld those T-beams and stiffeners because they thought if they did not, it could lead to a vessel failure. I know because I was working there at the time, and I have the picture of the guys doing the st. edge caper.
vessel failure. The original design for the containment vessel was for a straight wall vessel up to the dome.If you can find some pictures of the completed vessel, you will see that it has many horizontal rings with stiffeners all the way to the dome. Those horizontal rings are heavy
T-beams with vertical stiffeners welded in between. The 'plan of attack' was for CBI to erect some rings and then leave. The main contractor,B ,would get work done inside the rings and outside the rings up to some predetermined point and then call CBI back to erect some more rings. This continued until the containment was about half way done. Now 'B' was pouring concrete inside and outside the rings. Well, one day, the 'B' inspector saw that the containment
was getting some large buckles in it. These buckles were so bad that he took a picture of one of the buckles while an associate held a very long straight edge against a ring. The st. edge was tangent at the top and the bottom but in between their was a buckle large enough you could almost reach thru and shake hands. Well needless to say, CBI said it was 'Bs' fault because of the concrete pours etc. 'B' said it was CBI's fault. I don't know who was at fault but the 'fix' was to erect and weld those T-beams and stiffeners because they thought if they did not, it could lead to a vessel failure. I know because I was working there at the time, and I have the picture of the guys doing the st. edge caper.
