26.07.2013

Law suit over fatal lifting incident

Entergy Arkansas and its affiliate Entergy Operations, the owner and operator of Arkansas Nuclear One, have filed a joint lawsuit against Bigge Crane and Rigging for the fatal gantry collapse on March 31st ( Click here to see original report ) and cited engineer Claus Frederickson who designed the gantry, VEI General Contractors, DP Engineering of Fort Worth, Texas and John Scroggins, an employee of DP Engineering.

Bigge was lifting a 600 tonne stator that was being replaced during a refuelling shut down. The stator dropped around nine metres, killing Wade C. Walters, 24, and taking the plant's Unit 2 offline due to the shock and ground tremors caused by the incident.

Entergy claims Bigge did not conduct a proper load test of the gantry and that other contractors working on the stator project were involved in the decision to not perform a load test. The company also claims that a letter from Bigge rates the gantry's maximum capacity as 577 tons.

Entergy says the accident caused significant structural damage to the plant's turbine building and substantial economic loss from the unexpected outage of Unit 2, which was offline for almost a month, and the continuing outage of Unit 1. The suit follows on from one filed by Walters' mother against Entergy and Bigge
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Part of the falling gantry landed on a boom lift