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Company’s products address D&D needs

The largest supplier of radiation protection personnel and decontamination services to the U.S. nuclear power industry is also providing equipment and specialized services that are lowering costs for DOE’s D&D market. Bartlett Nuclear, Bartlett Services, and other Bartlett affiliates of Plymouth, Massachusetts are supplying two D&D products to DOE sites—the Super Sleever and the Excel Automatic Locking Scaffold (Tech ID 2320). These products are cutting the time required for typical D&D and maintenance tasks.

Super Sleever wraps up
When extension cords, cables, and hoses are used during routine maintenance or D&D operations in contaminated areas, they inevitably become contaminated. Since most sites don’t have the ability to easily clean the hoses and cables to meet free-release standards, these items are typically disposed of as low-level wastes. Another practice at sites is for workers to hand-wrap cables and hoses in plastic to protect them during D&D operations. Both practices have drawbacks: disposal is wasteful, and hand-wrapping is time-consuming and expensive. Having an efficient way to protect cables and hoses from contamination would save many sites either labor hours or the costs of disposing these materials as low-level waste.

The patented Super Sleever, developed by an operator at DOE’s Savannah Rive Site, is a device for quickly and easily encasing cords, hoses, and air lines in polyethylene protective sheaths, or sleeves, to prevent them from becoming contaminated during routine maintenance or D&D operations in contaminated areas. The labor required to apply and remove the plastic sleeving dispensed from a Super Sleever is much less than the cost of cleaning or replacing these items or of wrapping them by hand in the conventional manner.

The Super Sleever is outfitted with a disposable cardboard tube onto which polyethylene sleeving has been shirred. After insertion of the disposal sleeving tube into the Super Sleever, the leading end of a cord or hose is passed through the Super Sleever and taped to the free end of the sleeving. As a worker pulls the hose through the tube, the hose is encased within a sleeve. A worker can sleeve 50 feet of hose in 15 seconds. When the entire length of the hose is contained within a sleeve, the worker cuts the sleeve and tapes it to the end of the hose.

Bartlett sells the Super Sleever for $500 per unit and also supplies sleeving refills in various lengths and widths for accommodation of cables, hoses, and cords up to 2.5 inches in diameter.

Savannah River has sleeving experience
The idea for an improved sleeving method was conceived of by an operator at DOE’s Savannah River Site (SRS), who engineered a portable device for manually dispensing a sleeve over long and comparatively narrow objects in less than 1/10 of the time it took to sleeve objects without the device. This device was licensed for manufacture to Bartlett, which markets it as the Super Sleever and has supplied units to six nuclear power plants, including Big Rock Point near Charlevoix, Michigan, which is undergoing D&D; Brunswick in Southport, North Carolina; Susquehanna Steam Electric Station in Salem Township, Pennsylvania; Pickering-Ontario Power Generation Company in Ontario, Canada; and the U.S. Enrichment Corporation, which operates gaseous diffusion enrichment plants in Kentucky and Ohio.

SRS’s use of the product, beginning in January 2000, is helping the site reuse hoses, cables, and cords that were previously either manually sleeved or disposed of after a single use as low-level waste. SRS expects to increase the Super Sleever’s use across the site as more applications are identified during the device’s field deployments. With full use of the sleever, the site expects to avoid 17,000 cubic feet of low-level waste annually.

Westinghouse employee finds a better way

Roger Brown, a Westinghouse Savannah River Co. employee and senior operations specialist at DOE’s Savannah River Site, has nothing good to say about hand-sleeving. “I hate sleeving. I guess you could say I’m lazy. But when that’s your job for eight hours, you know there’s just got to be a better way.” Brown’s dislike of the slow and tedious process of wrapping plastic around cords and hoses led him to invent a device that makes sleeving seem like child’s play. Thanks to Brown and his invention—the Super Sleever—he and other workers at DOE sites and nuclear power plants may soon be able to strike hand-wrapping from their to-do lists. Sleeving 150 feet of hose once took two people 45 minutes to accomplish; but with the Super Sleever, the same job takes one person only 45 seconds. Brown proudly reports that his invention can potentially save the Savannah River Site $4 million annually in labor hours and waste reduction.

Brown is enjoying the recognition his invention is earning him. Among the awards he’s received are an Excellence in Technology Transfer for the Southeast Region, given by the Federal Laboratory Consortium, and a Pollution Prevention Award given by DOE, one of four that the Savannah River Site received for 2001. Brown also has a good chance of earning some money for his invention. Westinghouse and Brown will share royalties on any nongovernmental sales of the Super Sleever.


It's a snap
with an Excel scaffold
Bartlett's snap-together attachments offer increased safety and utility when carrying out D&D and maintenance tasks.Putting together the modular pieces of Bartlett’s Excel Automatic Locking Scaffold is akin to erecting a tower using an adult version of Tinker Toys. Bartlett’s snap-together attachments, including swing gates, floor hatches, ladders, trusses, cantilevers, lifting devices, and trolley systems, offer increased safety and utility when carrying out D&D tasks such as characterization, demolition, and asbestos abatement. Because workers can minimize the use of hand tools while attaching the system’s trigger-release horizontal bearers to vertical legs, they can avoid tedious and repetitive clamp tightening associated with the baseline scaffold. The Excel scaffold is also faster to set up than the baseline scaffold, which contributes to reduced labor expenditures for D&D operations, as well as for routine maintenance chores.

The Excel scaffold was demonstrated during three months in early 1999 as part of the D&D Focus Area’s Large-Scale Demonstration and Deployment Project (LSDDP) at the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory (INEEL). The demonstration investigated the feasibility of using the Excel scaffold to access pipes, ductwork, and boiler tanks insulated with asbestos-containing material. Comparative performance and cost data for the Excel scaffold and the baseline tube-and-clamp scaffold substantiated Bartlett's claims of the superiority of its Excel scaffold:

  • Excel used 47% fewer pieces than did the baseline.
  • Excel was easier to set up and dismantle and fewer tools were required.
  • Excel setup and dismantlement took between 60% and 70% less time than did the baseline’s setup and    dismantlement and costs 48% less.
  • Excel modular components, like gates and floor hatches, increased safety, as did the ability of personnel to tie off to     the Excel scaffold.

    The clearly superior results obtained by the Excel scaffold at INEEL has led to the site’s selection of it as a baseline technology to replace the standard tube-and-clamp scaffolding for D&D work. Larry Whitmill, project manager for the INEEL LSDDP, said that workers recognize and appreciate the scaffold's benefits.

    Good news travels fast, and news about the Excel scaffold is no exception. The technology has been selected for several follow-on deployments at INEEL involving asbestos removal and pipe demolition. Whitmill also says that Bechtel Nevada, performing D&D operations at the Nevada Test Site, heard about the Excel’s performance during the INEEL LSDDP and is interested in borrowing the scaffolding in support of a D&D project.

    For more information about the Super Sleever, go to Bartlett’s Web site at http://www.bartlettinc.com/
    equipment.html.

    For more information on the Excel scaffold’s performance and costs as compared to the baseline during the INEEL LSDDP, download the Excel Automatic Locking Scaffold Innovative Technology Summary Report from DOE’s Office of Science and Technology Web site at http://ost.em.doe.gov/pubs/itsrs/itsr2320.pdf

     

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    The Super Sleever is designed to hold cardboard tubes loaded with polyethylene sleeving. A rotating cam-lock is removed from the Super Sleever and the cardboard tube is placed inside. The clamp holds the cardboard tube firmly in place. A user passes one end of a hose or cord through the Super Sleever and tapes the sleeving material at the other end. With a hand-over-hand motion, the user pulls the item through the Super Sleever, thereby dispensing sleeving from the tube at a rate of 200 feet per minute.