Supacoustic custom slotted panels by Supawood

With major shopping complex redevelopment projects like The Willows, lead times are absolutely critical to maintain normal trading in existing retail areas while the work is being completed. The client also expects rapid completion to maximise a prompt return on their capital investment.

By choosing Supawood products architects are guaranteed a superior product together with reliable lead times to meet very tight project programmes. Supawood are able to support this due to their extensive experience in shopping centre developments throughout Australia.

Supawood’s inspiring range of products ensures a superior interior finish within the project’s budget to give superb quality, real value for money and the utmost benefit to the investment.

Hames Sharley Architects, the design team for The Willows Shopping Centre at Townsville, needed to integrate air ventilation into the interior design without interrupting the actual airflow or taking away from the overall look they wanted to achieve. An adaptable panel system was required and Supawood’s Supacoustic Custom slotted panels proved the perfect solution.

At the Willows Shopping Centre the Supacoustic panels have been used on both the ceilings and bulkheads. The bulkhead panels are open backed and form part of the air ventilation system. The panels have been custom manufactured with extra wide slots to accomplish even air flow into the malls of the shopping centre. The matching ceiling panels form featured areas and have Supawood’s IAT acoustic backing to help with noise reduction.

Supacoustic Custom panels can be supplied in a range of standard patterns as well as in custom permutations aimed at achieving a specific result. This gave the design team the flexibility to achieve the look and function they wanted. As Supacoustic Custom panels are available in a large range of durable finishes, it was also possible to match exactly the colour required. The panels used here are in Supafinish White.

This project emphasises the versatility of Supacoustic Custom panels. This panelling system can be fully customised to a designers exact needs, create the look they want while achieving excellent acoustics and smart access to utilities. And, as Supacoustic Custom comes complete with its own fixing system, the product is quick and extremely economical to install.

During the refueling outage, workers replaced the steam dryer. In a boiling water reactor, the steam dryer, a large metal component with no moving parts, rests above the nuclear core inside the reactor vessel. The steam created when water is heated to the boiling point while flowing through the core passes through another large metal component with no moving parts called the steam separator. Water droplets carried upward by the steam flow are removed as they pass through the steam separator and steam dryer. The dryer’s vertical panels have holes in them not unlike a cheese grater. Steam navigates its way through this metal maze while heavier water droplets tend to get snagged and left behind. The result is steam containing very few water droplets, also called clean or dry steam, which leaves the reactor vessel via four pipes to the turbine. The water removed from the steam drains by gravity down to re-enter the nuclear core for another chance of becoming steam.

Steam dryers were originally expected to last the entire 40-year operating lifetime of the reactor. As owners sought and obtained 20-year extensions to reactor operating licenses and also obtained permission to operate reactors at up to 20 percent higher power levels, more and more steam dryers needed replacement to allow reactors to operate longer at higher power levels.

On November 12, 2012, workers prepared the steam dryer for shipment to a waste site. The refueling floor’s overhead crane lifted the steam dryer and began moving it laterally towards the equipment hatch. The equipment hatch is a vertical opening extending from the refueling floor down to the first floor of the reactor building. The plan was to lower the steam dryer through the equipment hatch onto a vehicle for transport from the plant site.

That plan was carried out, but not without a bump along the way. En route to the equipment hatch, the radiation emitted from the large metal component that had resided near an operating nuclear reactor for nearly 40 years set off radiation monitors on the refueling floor. The purpose of these radiation monitors is to detect a fuel handling accident (e.g., a spent fuel bundle that is dropped onto other spent fuel bundles in the spent fuel pool breaking some fuel rods and releasing radioactive gases and particles into the water). When the monitors detect high levels of radiation from a fuel handling accident, or irradiated steam dryer, they cause a number of safety actions to automatically occur. For example, the ventilation system for the control room switched from its normal mode to a mode that protects the operators from radioactivity in the air. In addition, the ventilation system for the reactor building was shut down and an emergency ventilation system, called the standby gas treatment system, started. The standby gas treatment system maintains the reactor building at a slightly lower pressure to the outside atmosphere, forcing clean air to leak into the building instead of potentially contaminated air from leaking out.