Whiting Installs 250-ton Crane at Power Station

A 2.2 gigawatt electricity generation plant in the U.S. saved in maintenance outage costs after installation of a Whiting Corporation 250-ton turbine bridge crane, while adjacent turbine generators ran at full power with no down time.

Safety is priority at the nuclear generating station in Michigan, which produces enough power for a city of 1.25 million people. The Whiting team constructed an entire hydraulic heavy lifting and rotation test structure off-site in preparation for the actual installation.

Whiting claimed installing the bridge crane while the station was operating saved millions of dollars and a great deal of time prior to an upcoming refuelling outage. The innovative installation saved $18 million that would have been absorbed into the community rate base, it added.

The job required lifting two 88-foot girders 60 feet above the turbine floor and placing them between the two operating units.