Cavendish Nuclear announced it has used remote testing to overcome challenges posed by COVID-19 to deliver a critical electrical panel as part of the outage programme at EDF’s Hunterston B power station.

The panel was delivered ahead of schedule and on budget, Cavendish said.

"In order to ensure social distancing and protect our personnel, a novel approach was taken to conduct the witnessed Factory Acceptance Test (FAT) remotely instead of in-person with the customer present," it added.

This was achieved using several of cameras that provided a live feed from the factory floor to EDF Energy's engineers in Scotland.

"The remote FAT proved itself beyond expectations and its success has paved the way for other panel builds being witnessed using this approach," Cavendish said.  

David Queen, EDF investment delivery project manager thanked Cavendish Nuclear and its supplier for working through the technical challenges of undertaking the successful FAT.

Both advanced gas cooled reactors at the site are currently offline for graphite investigations. They are expected to return to service in July, EDF Energy said in a stakeholder update in May.

Photo: Hunterston B nuclear power station

Date: Tuesday, 16 June 2020
Original article: neimagazine.com/news/newscavendish-nuclear-delivers-electrical-panel-for-hunterston-b-7973733