Callaway Retrofits Saves Money with CCI SMAs

Aimerenue’s Callaway plant was experiencing costly and time consuming maintenance during their outages with the conventional actuators on their Anchor Darling MSIVs and MFIVs in the 1235 PWR plant. They had already begun a project to replace the MFIV actuators with products from another manufacturer when at a late stage AmerenUe Callaway became aware of the advantages of the CCI System Medium Actuators.

The CCI SMA provides great closing reliability with longer maintenance intervals. The main SMA design features provide the following advantages:

• Compact assembly, small overhanging structure
• Very high force reserve for closing and opening, resulting in high reliability
• Fast-closing
• Independence of external energy, ensuring high functional reliability and safety under disturbance conditions
• No Cobalt used in the actuator design, no welding
• No leakage to the outside either in the open or closed position, i.e. no stuffing boxes with undefined friction forces and possible leakages
• Same actuator arrangement as the CCI system medium actuator MSIV [complete valve] types DAS and PPS, of which more than 150 are installed worldwide.

The SMA will be controlled by CCI solenoid pilot valves. It is fully qualified, and the ‘N’ stamp will be applied. Not only was CCI’s solution adopted for the MFIV actuators, but also for the much larger MSIV actuators which had been causing the same maintenance problems.

The 4 SMA actuators for the MSIV and the 4 for the MFIV will be delivered to the NPP Callaway site for installation during the August 2002 outage.

Published in SOLUTIONS Fall 2001