A problem with a rail shipment recently held up delivery of a reactor pressure vessel en route to Georgia's Plant Vogtle construction site, but Southern Co. maintains that it won't delay the project.
Southern is leading a group of utilities building two new Westinghouse AP1000 reactors at the plant. Many of the project's large components, such as steam generators and reactor pressure vessels, are manufactured overseas and shipped to the plant through the Port of Savannah. The Augusta Chronicle reported Thursday that a special railcar moving a 300-ton reactor pressure vessel became misaligned on the tracks and stopped less than a mile from the port. Neither the RPV nor the rail car were damaged, a Southern Co. representative said, and they returned to the port.
The shipment was made using a 400-foot-long Schnabel car, which suspends oversized loads between two clusters of axles. Last year, the American Journal of Transportation reported that Westinghouse employs two Schnabel cars, in Savannah and in Charleston, S.C., to move components for reactors under construction at Vogtle and at the V.C. Summer plant.