Development of productivity started in 1981

Chapter 258: Big Construction V (Nuclear Force Construction)

The site selection for a commercial nuclear reactor is a complex and rigorous process that requires comprehensive consideration of multiple factors, including safety, environment, economy, and society.

Wang Jiankun's decision to locate a conventional second-generation nuclear reactor near the city of Hinbettin actually involves some risks.

Although there has been no major earthquake of magnitude 5 or above in the historical records of Hinbettin, it is indeed located on the eastern edge of the Alpine-Himalayan seismic belt and there are many active faults around it.

However, in order to accelerate the development of the nuclear industry, he had to choose here.

Of course, for safety reasons, he asked Tomoko to make some optimization designs for this reactor, which was modeled after Framatome's second-generation nuclear reactor.

For example, a set of super graphene energy storage devices has been added to the power supply that maintains the operation of the nuclear power plant.

When the external power supply fails due to an earthquake or other problems, the independently operated super graphene energy storage device inside will immediately transmit electrical energy to the reactor control circuit, quickly extract the fuel rods and moderator rods and put them in place, allowing the reactor to shut down urgently.

This newly added energy storage module does not affect the structure of the entire reactor, so it can be installed selectively when other reactors are built in southern Myanmar or along the coast in the future.

In Xinbeiting, Wang Jiankun led more than 10 geological experts to carefully inspect several locations marked on satellite images.

The final choice was a place surrounded by mountains on three sides and facing a river on one side.

The side facing the river faces the mountains to the north, so even if a major earthquake occurs in the future and causes a nuclear leak in the reactor, the nuclear contamination will remain in that valley.

In order to provide a stable cooling water source for the reactor, a small reservoir will be built 1 km upstream of the river.

This reservoir will intercept some of the rainwater from the mountains during the rainy summer season, ensuring that the reactor will have a sufficient flow of water for cooling during the dry season.

It can also prevent flash floods caused by heavy rains. After all, the rainfall in the northern mountainous areas can be extreme. Heavy rains in a short period of time can cause narrow rivers to overflow.

After the sites for the reactor and the supporting reservoir were selected, formal construction work began.

The Second Construction Bureau, which was fully controlled by the Quanjiezhen, was dispatched to build this highly confidential nuclear reactor (the First Construction Bureau was responsible for the key project of the Miyang High-Speed ​​Railway).

All the personnel who came to build the team are official members of the Quanjie Array, all of whom have brain-computer chips implanted, and there are about 5% new humans among them.

On May 1984, 5, the third day after International Labor Day, the construction of the Hinbettin Nuclear Power Plant officially started.

Those who attended the groundbreaking ceremony included my uncle Tseung Kyi, Prime Minister U Nu and several ministerial leaders.

The morning breeze carried the moisture of the Chindwin River and swept across the newly turned earth-yellow slopes at the bottom of the valley.

The three gray-brown bedrock mountains are like silent giants, surrounding the red silk rostrum erected by the Second Construction Bureau in the center.

As Prime Minister U Nu adjusted the silk flower on his chest, he caught a glimpse of a half-piece of driftwood floating at the bend of a distant tributary, appearing and disappearing in the swirling river water.

The sound of the whistle at ten o'clock startled the doves on the mountainside.

Wang Jiankun stood diagonally behind his uncle Cen Yong, staring at the beads of sweat oozing from the back of a minister's neck in the front row, leaving dark grey marks on the collar of his starched white shirt.

He heard the hum of the bulldozer idling fifty meters away, mixed with the shrill whistle of the microphone on the podium.

"This is a crucial battle to break the shackles of energy." U Nu's voice was shattered by the mountain wall.

Wang Jiankun's thumb repeatedly stroked the wooden handle of the foundation shovel, and the blue veins at the base of his thumb throbbed.

When the red silk cloth was lifted, the mountain wind suddenly blew hard, causing the foundation stone plaque with "Hinbettin Nuclear Power Plant" to sway slightly.

The spotlight exploded with a pale light in the overcast sky. A certain leader was dazzled by the flash and turned his head aside, revealing the unwashed shaving cream behind his ears.

The applause during the soil-building session started like a sudden rain and then stopped suddenly.

Wang Jiankun squatted down and picked up gravel mixed with dark green mica flakes. The cold touch reminded him of the green jade fragments he had found during a previous geological survey.

Technicians from the Second Construction Bureau were pulling the warning rope. The sound of the aluminum clips scraping against the rocks was like a blunt knife scratching glass, startling the night herons in the reeds by the river, which fluttered towards the lead-gray clouds.

The smoke from firecrackers rising from the valley mixed with the smell of diesel, condensing into a bluish-gray mist in the humid air.

Wang Jiankun looked at the fresh ruts made by the transport trucks on the winding mountain road, his Adam's apple moved, but in the end he said nothing.

After the groundbreaking ceremony, the workers of the Second Construction Bureau immediately began intensive construction.

More than 20 excavators rumbled in, marked the excavation locations with lime, and then began to dig the soft red soil on the surface shovel by shovel.

More than 10 bulldozers followed behind, pushing the red soil dug out by the excavator into a pile.

When a certain amount has been reached, a large shovel is used to scoop it up and pour it into the bed of the incoming truck.

These excavators, bulldozers and dump trucks were all produced by a joint venture engineering machinery manufacturer in Guang Province.

In order to speed up the construction, a large number of construction machinery will be used in the construction of the Hinbettin Nuclear Power Plant.

These large trucks dumped truckloads of red soil into low-lying areas 2 kilometers away.

After filling, these places will become small flat areas that can be used for parking vehicles.

Wang Jiankun stayed at the construction site for one day and then left with his uncle Cen Yong.

In the future, he will come from time to time to check the progress of the construction.

After leaving the nuclear power plant construction site, he came to Magao's industrial park and began to upgrade the equipment in the machinery factory.

In order to avoid being controlled by others, it would be best for nuclear power plants to produce all kinds of equipment themselves in the future.

In addition, the various machine tools and instruments used to build nuclear power plant equipment can be used to produce other large-scale, high-precision and advanced equipment in the future.

Among all the equipment in a nuclear power plant, the four most difficult to manufacture are the reactor pressure vessel (RPV), steam generator, main pump (Reactor Coolant Pump), and control rod drive mechanism (CRDM).

The material of the reactor pressure vessel (RPV) needs to be resistant to neutron irradiation embrittlement and withstand high temperatures of 350°C.

Since we have obtained some technical information from Framatome headquarters and know the general smelting process, it should not be difficult to smelt it.

The electric slag remelting furnace previously designed for the manufacture of gun barrel steel should be able to figure out the process route as long as we spend more time exploring it.

After the material is smelted, it still needs to be forged as a whole.

The diameter of this pressure vessel reaches 5 meters and the wall thickness is 250 mm. Although the required -ton hydraulic press is already available, the corresponding large mold still needs to be specially manufactured.

The forged parts also need to be welded. Due to the special material and the wall thickness of up to 250 mm, they need to be welded using narrow gap submerged arc welding (NG-SAW).

Wang Jiankun could only copy one or two of this welding equipment for the workers in the pressure vessel manufacturing plant to practice on, and then have other factories manufacture them.

After welding is completed, the weld needs to pass UT (ultrasonic) and RT (radio) inspection. Although these two types of inspection equipment have been manufactured when manufacturing artillery and large diesel engines, their performance is still not good enough.

Wang Jiankun also first manufactured several machines based on Framatome's products for people to practice and disassemble for research, and then consider manufacturing them in the future.

The manufacturing difficulties of steam generators mainly lie in the precision control of U-tube bending and tube sheet drilling.

Tens of thousands of U-shaped tubes, their bending accuracy error is <0.1 mm.

The thickness of the tube sheet is up to 500 mm, and the hole position accuracy is ±0.05 mm.

The large machine tools previously used for gun barrel manufacturing were not accurate enough, so Wang Jiankun needed to separately copy a set of high-precision CNC machine tools produced by Germany's DMG that was used by Framatome.

The main pump has a single pump power of up to 5-10 MW and is maintenance-free for 40 years.

The difficulty lies in the shaft sealing technology: to prevent the leakage of radioactive water, multiple layers of fluid dynamic pressure seals are required.

Bearing material, tungsten carbide coating, resistant to high temperature and high load.

Using the same method as before, he first copied a set of manufacturing equipment and let the machinery manufacturing factory practice using the copied equipment.

The manufacturing drawings and technical essentials of those equipments will be uploaded to the central computer, and Xingyao Machinery's research department will start the project research step by step.

The control rod drive mechanism (CRDM) is used to precisely control the reactor power and its movement speed is 0.5-30 cm/s.

The manufacturing difficulty lies in the radiation-resistant design of the electromagnetic coil (lifespan 60 years).

The material of the mechanical claw hook must be resistant to fatigue fracture.

He first copied these two materials and gave them to the corresponding manufacturers for trial production. The technical information was also uploaded and then the corresponding research institutes were asked to initiate research projects.

Wang Jiankun used this method to accelerate the industrial production capacity of Quanjiezhen again and again.

The manufacturing technology and material research of nuclear industry equipment can not only be used in the manufacture of a series of nuclear reactor equipment in the future, but also in the manufacture of other equipment such as large boilers for aircraft carriers and large gas turbines.

By July, the equipment began to be manufactured one after another.

Wang Jiankun visits various factories from time to time to check on the manufacturing progress, and uses his superpowers to help engineers when they encounter problems that are currently difficult to solve.

At this time, the earth excavation and cleaning work of the nuclear power plant was completed half a month ahead of schedule thanks to the efforts of all the staff of the Second Construction Bureau.

The director of the Construction Bureau moved his office to the construction site and led the workers to work in three shifts in order to complete the construction of this first large-scale nuclear power plant as soon as possible.

After the civil engineering work is completed, it is the concrete engineering work.

The initial foundation pouring and construction of the outermost protective shell were relatively easy and could be easily handled by the Second Construction Bureau, so Wang Jiankun did not go to the construction site to use his superpowers to assist in the construction.

When it came to the construction of the containment dome, he left the equipment manufacturers and went to the construction site to supervise the process.

The containment dome must be cast as a whole in one go, and the concrete cast as a whole must be free of cracks.

This requires that during the pouring process, the temperature of the concrete be controlled at 5~10℃. At this time, the temperature in northern Myanmar has been maintained above 30℃, and the water temperature is around 25℃.

In order to construct the dome, the Second Construction Bureau built a temporary ice-making factory near the construction site and converted a cave into an ice storage to store the ice blocks made in advance.

When it comes to the official construction, in addition to adding water at about 25°C, the concrete premix tower also has a material inlet to continuously add ice cubes.

The temperature of premixed concrete is just around 3°C.

Then it is transported to the construction site through multiple delivery pipes with a diameter of up to 80 mm.

When the concrete is officially poured, the temperature just rises to about 5 degrees Celsius.

At this time, there is a temperature sensor every 1 meter in the steel cage of the entire dome. The thin wires connected to these temperature sensors will transmit the temperature of the entire solidification process to the connected computer, so that engineers can intuitively see the temperature change curve of the concrete inside the dome as it solidifies.

"Attention all departments, the dome pouring is starting now. Pay attention to controlling the flow rate. If any abnormality is found at the temperature detection station, report it immediately and use the emergency plan to deal with it." After all departments were ready, the director of the Second Construction Bureau notified that the pouring task officially began.

"receive."

Oong~, cold concrete gushed out from several large pipes and fell into the steel cage of the dome below.

There were several trucks carrying ice blocks parked next to the pouring site. Because there were so many ice blocks, white vapor was surrounding the bodies of the trucks.

This is a precautionary measure to prevent the concrete temperature at a certain location from exceeding the predetermined temperature.

When certain sensors send out abnormally high temperature signals, prepared ice cubes will be thrown into that location for temporary cooling.

Of course, it is best not to let that happen, otherwise some other processing will be needed after adding the ice.

Wang Jiankun also stayed at the construction site after the concrete pouring began.

He used his superpowers to keep an eye on the situation inside the dome, recording data while preparing to take action when necessary.

If the pouring fails this time, the entire dome must be dismantled, and then the steel cage must be re-tied and re-poured.

The dome's steel cage is not randomly tied up. Hundreds of steel strands must be prestressed, and the tension error of all steel strands must be less than 2%.

Fortunately, the engineering staff of the Second Construction Bureau gave proper instructions, the previous simulation pouring was done very well, and no temperature abnormalities occurred during the pouring process.

After the dome is poured, it needs constant temperature maintenance, and the temperature must be controlled at 20+-3℃.

Workers attached pieces of insulation boards to the dome, and a batch of new temperature sensors were placed in pre-designed positions.

In the next three days, they will keep a close eye on the temperature changes inside and outside.

Once the dome of the first reactor was completed, the second one was much easier.

Although the workers were still meticulous in their work, they were not as nervous as they were during the first construction.

By September, the infrastructure construction of the two reactors was basically completed, and then equipment began to be hoisted and installed one by one.

Wang Jiankun also often comes to the site to check, and uses his superpowers to check the installation accuracy and whether there are any problems after installation that are not discovered by normal means.

By September 9, the two 30-megawatt nuclear reactors were almost completed and were waiting to be tested one by one and then loaded with nuclear fuel for startup.

At this time, the Sittwe Nuclear Power Plant, which was constructed by the French company Framatome, was still undergoing civil engineering work.

The French side said that if the subsequent payments are made on time, they will definitely be able to deliver within the construction period.

(End of this chapter)