Joint Venture Begins Making Cranes for Nuclear Power Plants

NuCrane Manufacturing LLC has begun fabricating, assembling and testing specialty cranes for nuclear power plants, at its new manufacturing facility in Hutchinson, Minn.

The 51,000-square-foot facility, which began manufacturing on April 5, is designed to make large overhead cranes mainly used in the nuclear industry. The facilitys customers include the Westinghouse-designed AP1000 plants under construction in China and those planned for future construction in the United States.

NuCrane Manufacturings initial project is the manufacture of a polar crane and cask-handling crane for China National Nuclear Corp.s Sanmen 1 Nuclear Power Plant, currently under construction in Sanmen County, Zhejiang Province, China. Production of the cranes is on schedule, and the cranes will be shipped from Minnesota to China in mid-2011, according to NuCrane.

NuCrane, a joint venture between Westinghouse Electric Co. subsidiary PaR Nuclear Inc. of Shoreview, Minn., and Hutchinson Manufacturing Inc., was formed in September 2009.

A typical nuclear power plant uses 40 cranes in various roles. The NuCrane plant will focus on the 16 specialty cranes for the U.S. AP1000TM market as well as specialty cranes for other U.S and global customers, according to the company.