A few years ago, at his son’s urging, Robert Lewis bought a small 3D printer and began to experiment, making household items, props for his son’s history class and Christmas decorations, including a 5-foot nutcracker.
“It quickly became an obsession of mine,” said Lewis, a shift manager at Dominion Energy’s nuclear plant in Surry.
He heard about the aviation industry and other big companies using the technology and spotted a 3D printed piece on a roller coaster while at Disney World with his family.
“That started to really plant the seed of how these things could benefit Surry.”
Lewis has helped design and produce dozens of 3D printed devices for the plant, leading to a wider initiative that has spread to Dominion’s other nuclear complex at North Anna.
Dominion officials say the technology allows for more flexibility to specialize equipment and produces pieces more quickly and cheaply than buying them elsewhere.
“Surry is one of our workhorses,” said spokesperson Tim Eberly. “It generates a massive amount of power nonstop. So this initiative is one of many that helps to contribute to the safety and the efficiency and prolonging the life of this power station.”
A third of Dominion’s energy supply comes from nuclear power.
The Surry Power Station opened in 1972. Two reactors there run 24/7 and produce about 1.8 gigawatts of electricity, or enough to power about 420,000 homes.
The facility was originally licensed to operate for 40 years, but got a 20-year extension from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 2003, and another a few years ago. It’s now set to operate through at least the early 2050s.
Some parts used in the plant half a century ago are no longer manufactured, Lewis said. Others wouldn’t be built the same way today.
“A lot of our equipment was not designed with modern-day safety standards in mind,” he said. “We've made it through all these years able to get by, but this has enabled us to increase the safety.”
The 3D initiative does not include any parts that directly interact with nuclear reactors. Most are small and highly specific items that support the surrounding infrastructure.
Lewis has made several iterations of a device used to lock circuit breakers, for example.
This week, he fired up a small 3D printer in a conference room at the Surry complex to demonstrate.
The machine whirred to life and got to work, with a robotic arm jerking quickly to build the lock layer by tiny layer. About a half hour later, Lewis pulled out the brand-new item made of red thermoplastic.
The 3D printing process begins with computer software to create and refine a product’s exact design. The computer file then feeds into a physical machine that replicates the design in hundreds or thousands of layers.
The desktop printer Lewis used to demonstrate this week is much smaller than the ones Dominion now uses, which would be able to produce about 20 locking devices at once, he said.
One of the company’s smaller machines, which cost about $1,500, has logged 4,000 hours over the past few years. There are a couple of others at Surry, the largest of which costs about $13,000.
Lewis said the technology has a low cost of entry and is ultimately more cost-effective. Each circuit breaker lock, for example, would cost about $5 to $10 on the market. The ones printed in-house are about 25 cents.
Plus, they can be tailored to workers’ needs. Employees often pitch ideas for new creations, which have included a specialized wrench, labels, a mold that serves as added protection on handrails and rulers to measure battery electrolytes.
The largest thing Lewis has 3D printed so far is a 7-foot shield used to protect certain equipment undergoing maintenance. It took several days for the printer to complete it.
