A UK nuclear licensed site had a pair of existing Goliath cranes that were beginning to fall short of the site's increasingly demanding requirements. A wide range of factors needed addressing including operator safety, facility capacity, and future-proofing.
To meet the challenge, SCX Special Projects engineered one of the most advanced cranes it has ever produced. It called on every engineering discipline from mechanical, to electrical, to hydraulic, to controls, to safety.
Our client has a facility handling nuclear processing materials at its site in north-west England. The waste is packaged into cement and steel cylinders and stored on two 330-metre long ‘rafts’.
The previous raft cranes were operated from the raft itself. This placed operators in controlled areas with an increased risk of exposure, and manual visual positioning meant that cylinders could only be stacked two high.
Our solution is two semi-automated and remotely controlled ‘Goliath’ raft cranes, significantly reducing operator exposure and facilitating triple-stacking of cylinders to make better use of the storage facility.
SCX Special Projects designed, built, tested and installed two cranes, each with a sophisticated rotating and latching grapple, to run on the existing raft rails. The solution has bespoke nuclear protection features including our MotoSuiveur hoist safety units, CCTV and load recovery.