News and Projects

Duke Energy – McGuire Nuclear Station

The Merrick Group returned to McGuire Nuclear Station in September of 2015 and March of 2016.

This time around the plant asked that we hydrolaze their feedwater heaters as an alternative to shooting swivel U-tube scrappers to remove the iron oxide build-up on the tubes. We performed this work on (4) feedwater heaters in September and (6) feedwater heaters in March. In addition to the feedwater heater work we cleaned, dimple plugged, and plugged tubes in the condenser water boxes. We also performed maintenance on other heat exchangers throughout the outage. The Merrick Group also assisted Taprogge in performing maintenance on the amertap system. We will be returning to McGuire in the spring of 2017.

Point Beach Nuclear

The Merrick Group returned to Point Beach in October of 2015 and March of 2016.

Our scope of work included hydrolazing condenser water boxes, various heat exchangers, and feedwater heaters. We completed this work by manual hand lancing with pressure up to 20,000 psi. We will be returning to Point Beach in the spring of 2017.

Duke Energy – Catawba Nuclear Station

The Merrick Group took part in the fall of 2015 Catawba Nuclear outage.

We worked on the condenser water boxes, various heat exchangers, and the amertap system. We cleaned and plugged tubes in the water boxes along with pressure washing and inspecting the amertap system. We will be returning to Catawba in the fall of 2016.

Calvert Cliffs

The Merrick Group returned to Calvert Cliffs in November of 2015 to perform the online condenser cleaning.

In February of 2016, we participated in their major outage. Our scope of work included cleaning (6) condenser water boxes, (2) feedwater heaters, vac truck services, and amertap maintenance. We also assisted EST in stabilizing a tube in one of the condenser water boxes. The vac truck services included sucking out each water box before and after the cleaning and sucking out numerous pipes for the plant. We will be back in the fall of 2016 for the annual online water box cleaning.