Entradas
Ensa participated in the Heavy Fabrication Summit (HFS2018) in Finland
Maliaño, December 12th, 2018-. Equipos Nucleares S.A., S.M.E participated in the Heavy Manufacturing Summit held at the Pemamek headquarters in Loimaa, Finland whose main objective was to make known the latest welding trends to increase quality, productivity and efficiency in heavy manufacturing.
The event was attended by over a hundred participants from companies around the world who came together to learn about the latest trends in heavy welding , recent innovations in this field and ways to increase production capacity. In addition, there were live demonstrations of six different automated PEMA welding and production solutions. Domingo Lima, head of the Center for Advanced Technology represented the Cantabrian company there.
Ensa collaborates again with SANDIA and PNNL (USA ) and BAM (Germany) laboratories
Maliaño, December 3, 2018 – Equipos Nucleares S.A., S.M.E has reached a new agreement with the American research laboratories of SANDIA and PNNL – with whom already collaborated in a project to measure vibrations during the transport of its ENUN 32P cask in 2017 – by which it will make available to SANDIA the 1/3 scale model of the cask, so that a series of new tests can be carried out in the facilities of the BAM research Centre, in Berlin . Ensa’s technicians will support SANDIA, PNNL and BAM through the tests that will be carried out in this Centre.
The foreseen tests are framed in the verification of the behaviour of the cask and the spent fuel for compliance with the safety requirements indicated in the Normal Conditions of Transport, which are required in the licensing processes of casks for the Transport mode, according to the current IAEA regulations .
As indicated above, the scale model to be used was built in Ensa for the tests performed under Normal Transport Conditions and Hypothetical Accident Conditions, carried out at the SANDIA facilities , to validate the design of the ENUN 32P cask and the impact limiters of all the casks of the ENUN family, checking the accelerations suffered by the cask, while in this new project the accelerations suffered by the fuel will be checked in greater detail.
Once the tests are completed, all the equipment will return to Ensa while SANDIA and PNNL will be in charge of post-processing and analysing the results obtained. This new collaboration confirms the preparation of Ensa’s technological equipment and its positioning in the research of more advanced products.
PARTICIPANTS IN THE COROMA PROJECT hold their general meeting in Ensa
Maliaño, November 13, 2018 – The European project COROMA, in which Equipos Nucleares S.A., S.M.E participates as an end user, continues and the second anniversary of its beginning is celebrated, two working days were organized in the company’s facilities. The main objective was to expose the most significant advances of this important project whose aim is to develop an autonomous modular robot, easily programmable, safe in its interaction with humans and other machines and able to adapt to changes in its environment.
The first day was of a technical nature and served to share their experiences. In the different presentations details of their developments were shown and the operation of their modules was explained. At the end of the day, all the participants visited Ensa’s workshop and showed their interest in the processes and components it manufactures.
The second day was attended by two experts in charge of evaluating the work carried out. After the presentations of those responsible for each of the work packages and the subsequent analysis, the evaluators showed their good impression of the level reached so far in each of the sections.
In the following months, work will continue on the integration of the different modules, after which, in the last four months of 2019, final tests will begin on the applications proposed by end users.
The COROMA project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 723853.
Ensa participated in the 8th NDA Estate Supply Chain Event in Manchester
Maliaño, November 6, 2018 – Equipos Nucleares, S.A., S.M.E participated in the 8th edition of the NDA Estate Supply Chain Event held in Manchester; the most important event in Europe related to nuclear dismantling.
This fair, organised by industry for industry, provided the opportunity to establish contacts with more than 300 exhibiting companies in the nuclear industry. On this occasion, the Cantabrian company was able to share its experience in the dismantling of both Spanish plants and experiences outside Spain .
Ensa welcomes ENUSA President
Ensa welcomes ENUSA President
Maliaño, October 22, 2018 – Equipos Nucleares S.A., S.M.E received the visit of José Vicente Berlanga, president of ENUSA INDUSTRIAS AVANZADAS, S.A., S.M.E , who was accompanied by Pablo Zuloaga, Government delegate in Cantabria.
Eduardo González-Mesones, president of the Cantabrian company; Rafael Triviño, general manager and Ángel Cosío, director of Human Relations and Corporate Social Responsibility, explained some of the most relevant aspects of the company’s activity focused on the design and manufacture of large components for the nuclear industry, spent fuel management and which provides different services in the plant covering its entire life cycle, including dismantling.
During his visit to the workshop, Berlanga was able to gain first-hand knowledge of some of the equipment currently in different stages of manufacture and showed special interest in the fuel heads of the Spanish nuclear power plants that Ensa has been supplying to ENUSA since 1998. «I have been able to verify in situ that a Spanish company such as Ensa is a technical reference in the manufacturing of components for such a demanding sector as the nuclear sector», he declared.
For its part, Zuloaga valued this meeting very positively and expressed its commitment to visit the facilities of the company based in Maliaño on another occasion and in greater detail.
SEPI Group
Both companies belong to the SEPI Group, Ensa 100% owned and ENUSA 60% owned, a holding company that covers a total of 15 public companies directly and majority owned, with more than 74,000 professionals. It also has a supervised public foundation and minority direct shareholdings in nine other companies and indirect shareholdings in more than one hundred companies.
Ensa participated in the SNE meeting with two conferences to present its advances in the ITER project and in the automation of the measurement of tube plate hole diameters
Maliaño, 11th October 2018.- Equipos Nucleares S.A., S.M.E participated in the 44th annual meeting of the Spanish Nuclear Society with two presentations. The first one to present its advances in the ITER project and the second one focused on the automation of the measurement of tube plate hole diameters.
Sofia Corino, in charge of the Special Projects area, presented the latest novelties related to the assembly of the ITER vacuum chamber, as well as the validation of the prototypes developed.
Her, presentation was divided into two blocks to explain, on the one hand, the scope of Ensa within this project of international importance, as well as the challenges and technical difficulties that must be overcome, among which the limitation of space and access stands out. On the other hand, she talked about the prototypes already developed and the advance of their validation on the 1:1 models.
Domingo Lima, head of Ensa’s Advanced Technology Center , spoke about «Automation of the measurement of tube plate diameter holes».
In this sense, he explained that during the manufacture of the steam generators the drilling of the Tube Plate is carried out and that the difficulty in the quality control of these holes has made necessary the development of a new system and the improvement of the methodology to make the inspection in an automated and more efficient way.
Some of the advances of this robotic system are:
– Guarantee of 100% inspection of the holes.
– Calculation of measurements in real time without further processing.
– Registration of the acquired data.
– Automatic generation of reports with all measurements and non-conformities.
– Adaptable to all types of geometries.
– Improved productivity.
– Reliability of the system.
Ensa participated in the Nuclear South West Conference in Bristol
Maliaño, October 8, 2018 – Equipos Nucleares S.A., S.M.E participated in the Annual South West Nuclear Conference held in Bristol where the state of the construction works of the Hinkley Point C power plant was explained and a description of the nuclear supply chain in the United Kingdom was given, as well as several platforms and organizations and success stories of companies that are collaborating in the Hinkley Point project.
For the Cantabrian company, attending this event was a «great opportunity to establish contacts with potential partners and obtain more information about possible business opportunities in the British market».
Ensa, within a group of technologists, winner of the «Secretary’s Honor Awards – Achievement Award»
The Cantabrian company was nominated in May 2018 for an R&D project on its ENUN32P cask.
Maliaño, 04 October 2018.- Equipos Nucleares S.A., S.M.E in collaboration with other national and international technologists -Enresa and Enusa, the American laboratories: Sandia National Laboratories and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and several South Korean organizations , has finally won the «Secretary’s Honor Awards – Achievement Award» granted by the Department of Energy of the Government of the United States of America for an R&D project to study the behaviour of spent fuel elements transported in its ENUN 32P dual-purpose, storage and transport cask, and verify the calculations made during the design.
U.S. laboratory Sandia led this international data collection test during an eight-month triathlon to quantify the accelerations and vibrations and deformations experienced by uranium oxide rods from a simulated spent fuel element during transportation by rail, ship and truck. Its analysis revealed that the accelerations and deformations were well below the resistance limit of the irradiated fuel.
The award recognizes the contribution of this equipment to the benefit of U.S. society and represents the highest non-monetary recognition that can be received.
Other entities that have received this prestigious award have been the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and NASA.