John Cockerill supports ENGIE with the retrofit of the Hamon® natural draft cooling tower at the Tihange nuclear power plant

As part of the strategy to extend two Belgian nuclear power plants, our Hamon team is proud to collaborate with ENGIE following the award, this fall, of a major contract: the retrofit of the Hamon® natural draft cooling tower at Tihange 3, in the Province of Liege.

This ambitious project will involve a large part of our teams and will promote close collaboration between our different sites:

• our technical center of excellence in Belgium ;
• our project teams specialized in large-scale retrofits ;
• our engineering office ;
• our production plant in France which will supply no less than 17,000 m³ of heat exchanger bodies and 9,000 m² of demister panels for this project.

The work will be carried out in two phases with up to 70 workers mobilized on-site in a context of high co-activity. Preparation and studies are on their way in coordination with ENGIE Belgium’s activities on the equipment structure.

This preparation—unusually brief for such an operation—is essential to ensure flawless execution, delivering quality work in the strict respect of safely and schedule, and fully aligned with our client’s requirements.

This new project demonstrates the ability of our experts to tackle major technical challenges and to bring their professionalism to contribute alongside ENGIE to the energy transition in Belgium.