Delivery of Vessel Head to the Doel 4 Reactor in Belgium

AREVA delivered to ELECTRABEL (a subsidiary of the ENGIE Group) a new vessel head for Unit 4 of the Doel nuclear power plant in Belgium. Weighing over 60 tons, this steel component will be installed as part of the reactor’s outage maintenance operations.

Several areas of AREVA's expertise and different industrial facilities were involved in the manufacture and installation of this component. Machined at Le Creusot, then assembled and welded at Chalon / Saint-Marcel, this component left the factory on Friday, July 3^rd and was transported by road to the Doel power plant. The control rod drive mechanisms, which were manufactured at AREVA’s Jeumont plant were welded onto the reactor vessel head on site. At a later stage, AREVA’s services teams from Chalon will mount the reactor vessel body after it has been loaded into the reactor building. Monitoring and inspection operations will take place following this installation phase.

The reactor vessel head serves as a protective barrier to the fuel located in the pressure vessel. It features openings for the control rod drive mechanisms to pass in order to control and regulate the nuclear reaction as part of electricity generation.

Philippe Samama, Senior Executive Vice President AREVA’s Reactors & Services Business Group, said: "The delivery of the reactor vessel head to the Doel nuclear power plant demonstrates once again AREVA's capacity to manufacture and deliver critical components of the reactor coolant system, in compliance with our customers’ requirements and with quality and safety regulations”.