The first tower cores arrive for the construction of the power plant

They will carry out the myriad lifting activities of power plant construction. The lifting equipment will be delivered to the construction site according to the phases of construction, based on the relevant organisation plans. The lifting works for the base slab of Block 5 are the first for which tower cranes will be needed. Two of these have already arrived at the Paks site. The structures, each with a load capacity of 40 tonnes, have been delivered to Paks as individual elements and will be installed and assembled on site.

The construction requires the coordinated work of several cranes and other means of transport. A special and spectacular lifting operation will be the transport and insertion of the reactor vessel into the prepared reception area. A Liebherr LR 11350 lifting machine with a considerable lifting capacity will be used for the construction of the containment and for the lifting of the main water circuit elements. Lifting equipment also played an important role in the construction of the four units of the nuclear power plant in operation today, when the most powerful tower crane of the time, a Potain with a hook height of 85 metres and a lifting capacity of 20 tonnes, arrived in the country.

Contractors building a power plant always use the lifting technology developed for the type of power plant. The types of lifting equipment to be used for the construction of Paks II are the same as those used on other projects by Roszatom. Cranes of this size are only required on a small number of projects, meaning that there are only a few of them in the world. As in all other fields of technology, there is a continuous evolution. Last autumn, it was announced that after many years of design and the production of steel components, the final assembly of the world's largest lifting capacity land crane had begun near Westdorpe in the Netherlands. Unsurprisingly, the giant crane will be used primarily to assist with energy projects. The crane has a maximum lifting capacity of 6,000 tonnes, a special feature is that it can lift loads of up to 3,000 tonnes to a height of 220 metres, while its maximum outreach is 144 metres.

Special lifting equipment will not only be needed during construction at the Paks II nuclear power plant: lifting equipment will be used to move containers containing fresh and spent fuel, components, parts, tools and sometimes maintenance personnel for the plant's equipment. The most special of all the lifting machines used is the polar crane, which carries out material handling tasks inside the containers. The 400 tonne tare will have four hoists, a 360 tonne, a 60 tonne and two 5 tonne capacity cranes, and the most interesting feature of its design is that it will move on a circular track with a diameter of 41.5 metres. For comparison, the 250 tonne crane in the Paks nuclear power plant reactor hall has a 36 metre gauge and a dead weight of 280 tonnes.

Among the lifting equipment used outside the nuclear island, the turbine hall crane is a double girder bridge crane with three lifting gears, with lifting capacities of 350 tonnes, 40 tonnes and 6.3 tonnes. What makes the crane unique is the span, i.e. the distance between the two crane tracks, which is 56 metres. There is no other bridge crane in operation in Hungary with such a high load capacity and a large span.