Dominion Energy cuts nuclear condenser inspections from 8 days to 8 hours

Electric utility; nuclear power generation · Confined space inspection · Vendor published

The job

Dominion Energy's Surry Power Plant in Surry County, Virginia runs two reactors with two main condensers. Condenser inspections used to mean building scaffolding inside the condenser and working crews at height in a dark, wet confined space through 7 days of 12-hour shifts. The plant's unmanned systems group now flies a collision-tolerant drone inside the condenser during shutdowns, collecting visual, LiDAR, and ultrasonic thickness data without scaffolding, and the data feeds a 3D model used for longer-term condition tracking.

The operation

840-acre site with a 2-reactor system (published-by-vendor); site workforce grows from 700+ in normal operations to over 1,000 people during a shutdown (published-by-vendor)

The equipment

Flyability Elios 3 with 4K camera, LiDAR, and ultrasonic thickness (UT) payload

The published numbers

Inspections cut from 8 days to 8 hours per the case study title (published-by-vendor); inspections now completed in two 12-hour shifts rather than 7 days of 12-hour shifts (published-by-vendor); the plant saved over $200,000 per shutdown on condenser inspections alone (published-by-vendor); scaffolding took 12 to 14 twelve-hour shifts to erect and 4 to 6 shifts to dismantle with a minimum of 6 scaffolders per shift (published-by-vendor); scaffolding cost over $1,000 per hour (published-by-vendor); a two-reactor nuclear plant can lose over $3 million in revenue per shutdown day (published-by-vendor); condenser work heights of 20 meters (65 feet) (published-by-vendor); inspection cycle of every 16 to 18 months (reported-by-trade-press, in coverage adapted from the vendor account). Drone program cost: not published. Payback: not published.

Where a source did not publish a figure, this entry says so rather than guessing.

What we would check before believing it applies to you

The savings here come from deleting scaffolding, so the number only transfers to plants where the visual and UT deliverable is accepted in place of hands-on access; if maintenance is found, access still gets built and part of the cost returns. Dominion runs an internal unmanned systems group with a named coordinator, so this is a trained in-house program, not a one-off contractor flight, and a buyer should budget for that competence. Verify your NDE program and authorized inspector will accept drone-collected UT readings before assuming the 300-hour class of manual UT work goes away. Nuclear sites add radiological controls and foreign material exclusion rules to any flight plan, which takes review time the case study does not dwell on. The independent article covering this job restates the vendor account rather than auditing it, so treat all dollar figures as vendor-attributed.

Sources