Showcase Projects
Southern California Edison

Recently our longtime client, Southern California Edison, challenged us to design, fabricate, and deliver a life-size reactor containment mock-up that measures 11 feet high and is formed of heavy gauge structural steel. Working from drawings and photos of the actual unit, our San Diego sheet metal shop crew met the challenge in just nine days.

The mock-up is being used by San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) employees to practice changing out graylocks (specialty containment fittings inside which are fuel rods). Teams of 16 people, fully suited up and working under a strict time constraint, learn via the mock-up how to swiftly disassemble the fittings. They then practice removing old fuel rods, replacing them with new ones, and reassembling the graylocks. The goal is to simulate the real-life operation - which must be performed in the core of the nuclear reactor in less than four hours and without a single misstep. Practiced crews are safer, more efficient crews in any industry; at SONGS practice is critically important.

The mock-up is not only being put to excellent use at SONGS. Word of its application has spread to representatives of other utility companies, with the result that several of them have expressed interest in training their crews on the University-fabricated mock-up, or in obtaining one of their own.

The SONGS Mock-Up Fabrication Team:
University project manager: Rick Tenbroek
Sheet metal shop foreman: Joe Powell

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