SRS Pump sent to Fukushima (2011)
01/01/2011
The world's largest concrete pump, deployed at the construction site of the U.S. government's $4.86 billion mixed oxide fuel plant at Savannah River Site, was sent to Japan in a series of emergency measures to help stabilize the Fukushima reactors.
"The bottom line is, the Japanese need this particular unit worse than we do, so we're giving it up," said Jerry Ashmore, whose company, Augusta-based Ashmore Concrete Contractors, Inc., is the concrete pumping supplier for the MOX facility.
The 190,000-pound pump, made by German-based Putzmeister has a 70-meter boom and can be controlled remotely, making it suitable for use in the unpredictable and highly radioactive environment of the doomed nuclear reactors in Japan, he said.
A second 70-meter was mobilized two months later at the MOX fuel project at SRS to complete the job.