Dive summary:
- Bigge Crane and Rigging, one of the nation's major crane suppliers, and one of its engineers are targeted in a lawsuit in which Entergy Arkansas and Entergy Operations claim Bigge had not tested a gantry with the exact parts used to build it for repair work at the Arkansas Nuclear One plant in Russellville, Ark.
- The gantry let go while moving a 550-ton piece of a generator on March 31, killing an iron worker, damaging the generator unit, which is still out of service, and causing the second generator at the station to go out of service for almost a month.
- The utility's claim is that Bigge and engineer Claus Frederiksen said it wasn't possible at that station to do a required lift test with 125% of the expected weight and that they said the same gantry had been used elsewhere to lift more weight, but the rig actually had three new parts not included in any earlier assembly.
From the article:
Entergy Arkansas and Entergy Operations say in the suit that they continue to suffer economic losses from the incident, noting that Unit 1 ... is a baseload unit that typically would operate at full power around-the-clock. ...