The Krško Nuclear Power Plant is co-owned by the Slovenian state-owned company Gen-Energija and the Croatian state-owned company known as Hrvatska Elektroprivreda (HEP). This plant was connected to the power grid in 1981 but became commercially operational after two years in 1983.
The significance of the Krško Nuclear Power Plant can be grasped by the fact that this plant provides more than one-quarter of Slovenia’s power and 15% of Croatia’s power. Let’s dig deeper to understand the project and the instrumentation services offered by the world leader in the Geotech industry, Encardio Rite.
Project Overview
The Krško Nuclear Power Plant is a 2-loop Westinghouse pressurized water reactor with a rated thermal capacity of 1,994 thermal megawatts (MWt) and 696 megawatts-electric (MWe). The power plant runs on enriched Uranium, fuel mass, and demineralized water as the moderator and has 36 bundles of 20 control rods. It has a sister power plant called Angra located in Brazil.
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Each control rod is made of silver, indium, and cadmium alloys. The high-level nuclear waste is stored in the spent fuel pool. This method of storing nuclear waste is generally used by nuclear power plants all around the world.
Instrumentation Offered
With over 56 years of experience and innovation in the geotechnical industry, Encardio Rite has emerged as one of the biggest world leaders. With their immaculate reputation and marketing associates, they were awarded the opportunity to work on the Krsko Nuclear Plant.
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Through the marketing associate in the region, Encardio Rite has been awarded to provide various geotechnical instruments to the site. These geotechnical instruments included:
Anchor bolt load cells
Anchor bolt load cells, also known as center hole load cells, are used depending on their application. In Nuclear power plants, these load cells are generally used for monitoring the variations in the tension in the prestressing tendons used for stabilizing the foundation of the reactor. It is extensively used in determining the load in rock bolts, tiebacks, foundation anchors, cables, or struts.
Sister Bars
Encardio Rite is known for manufacturing and supplying precisely engineered instruments. Our Models EDS-12V/EDS-12V-EX vibrating wire sister bar strain gauge, also known as rebar strain gauge, are specially designed for embedment in concrete structures. They are ideal for strain measurement in structures like piles, bridge abutments, dams, and foundations. Each sister bar has an inbuilt thermistor to determine the temperature at the installation location.
In Nuclear power plants, these are embedded to detect local distortions in containment, dome, and raft during construction and operation. The sister bars are also used to detect tendon failures.
Portable Smart Readout Units
Encardio Rite provides a wide range of vibrating wire sensors with readout units. Here, we supplied Model EDI-54V vibrating wire indicator, a microprocessor-based readout unit. It is an advanced readout unit/logger that can store calibration coefficients of more than 10,000 vibrating wire sensors.
The best feature of this readout unit is that it uses a smartphone with Android OS, using its huge computational and image processing power to display the logged data as tables and graphs.
This allows the field operator to verify the logged data and investigate any anomaly immediately at the site while taking readings. This saves time and energy while ensuring precise and reliable data.
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Conclusion
Encardio Rite’s reliable and robust world-class instruments and 56 years of expertise made the monitoring works at this project successful. It is important to remember that instrumentation and monitoring services are not only for design optimization and construction control but also for the safety and security perspective of the project during its operation.
The significance of this power plant was immensurable, and our contribution to supplying various geotechnical instruments proved to be indispensable. Our proven geotechnical instruments and innovative monitoring services are known for their accuracy and reliability, and we achieved yet another success with this project. To get a more detailed insight into our projects worldwide, keep following this space.