Construction work organization at the Paluel NPP (France)

Construction work organization at French Paluel NPP, comprising four 1300 MWe power units with PWR type reactors, has been described. Ground works have been performed by three excavating machines with dipper capacity 5.5, 7.6 and 8.3 m3, total productivity of them reaching 1200 m3/hr. To transport the ground 22 dump trucks with bulk body capacity 18 cm3, load-carrying capacity 35 t were used. Each dump truck was loaded in 49-90 s, daily average productivity reached 45000 m3, which permitted to fulfil the ground works in two years. To produce concrete mixture at the NPP construction site a concrete plant is built with the productivity 160 m3/hr with two computer-controlled concrete-mixing installations. Concrete-placing machines with a telescopic boom transported concrete mixture to 42 m at the boom inclination up to 30 deg. Them the mixture was transported by belt conveyers with the length of a separate link 30 m and it was supplied to rotating conveyer, permitting to place concrete in the radius of 12.5 m at the angle of approximately 24 deg. The rate of placement of concrete in cylindrical part of containment reached 10 m/month and was realized by two concrete-delnvery pipelines up to 118 m long. When erecting building constructions 14 tower cranes with load-carrying capacity of 3-15 t and one tower crane with load carrying capacity of 500 t were used