RING CRANES Ӏ PROFILE
RAISING THE ROOF: BIG CARL MARKS A MAJOR MILESTONE AT HINKLEY POINT C
Sarens’s SGC 250 lays claim to being the largest crane in the world. Nicknamed ‘Big Carl’ it has a capacity of 5,000 tonnes in a single lift. Since 2019 it has been located at the Hinkley Point C nuclear power station construction site, on the west coast of England, where it has been crucial to the construction of the power station. At the end of 2023, the 15th December to be precise, it conducted one of the most spectacular lifts of the job: it raised the lid for the station’s first reactor successfully into place. The steel dome weighed 245 tonnes and is 14 metres tall; it now sits on top of the 44-metre-high reactor building. The dome is the top part of the reactor building’s inner containment, a steel cylinder encased in concrete. 47m in diameter, it is wider than the dome of St Paul’s Cathedral.
It is made up of 38 prefabricated panels which were shipped to
Hinkley Point and welded together in an onsite factory. Prefabrication and modular construction are key features of the station’s construction. The lift started at 07:20, a time carefully planned to take advantage
of a weather window to allow the hour-and-a-half long manoeuvre to be completed in low wind conditions. Earlier in December the 750 tonne Polar Crane, that will serve the
reactor during its working lifetime, was lifted into place – again by Big Carl – in a single piece and set in place above the reactor building’s third and final steel liner ring. This internal crane will rotate 360° above the reactor and be used for refuelling and installing equipment. The major milestone lift of the roof closes the building, allowing
the first nuclear reactor – there will be two at the site – to be installed. 10,000 workers and 3,500 British companies are building the station, which is planned to provide zero-carbon electricity for six million homes once it is running in, according to the most recently-announced schedule, 2028. A video of the lift can be seen here:
www.youtube.com/ watch?v=s2GkK1TQzCc
Big Carl lifting the 245-tonne domed roof onto the first reactor building.
36 CRANES TODAY
Images courtesy of EDF
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