Averting disaster
Backup power units and parts for nuclear plants, chemical factories crafted in Columbus
Apower outage at a nuclear power plant could be a catastrophe. That is why the plants’ control rooms have some of the toughest backup battery systems around, and most of those systems have been built by a Columbus manufacturer.
Ametek Solidstate Controls makes backup power units used by a majority of the nuclear plants in this country and many in other countries. The company also creates backup power systems for other industrial sites, such as oil refineries and chemical manufacturing plants.
“You’ll see the favorite color out here is gray,” said Steve Wetta, director of operations for Ametek Solidstate, leading a tour of the Far North Side factory floor.
Indeed, the systems are metal boxes, often about the size of a refrigerator. Most are gray, but some are green and a few are blue.
Most of the components are fabricated in-house, including coils of copper that go inside battery backup systems. And then, when the products are complete, most of the testing takes place here in
the 60,000-squarefoot plant.
For nuclear-plant systems, the testing lasts about six months in a process set out by federal regulators. One step, which takes place at an offsite business, is a visit to a “shake table,” which simulates a severe earthquake.
The plants have many safety systems, including multiple battery backups. An earthquake is just one of the potential causes of a power failure in a plant’s control room. The batteries need to be ready for all possibilities.
If a control room loses power, it becomes difficult to safely shut down the nuclear reactor. The 2011 disaster at the Fukushima plant in Japan shows what can go wrong, as an earthquake and tsunami led to a failure of safety systems and a leak of radioactive material.
Company officials declined to say about how much these backups cost, instead noting that the custom-made products are “larger capital expenditures” whose prices vary substantially based on each customer’s needs.
“There are two considerations regarding the importance of the (backup power systems) — economics and safety,” said Richard Denning, a nuclear safety consultant who recently retired from the nuclear engineering faculty at Ohio State University.
“Depending on what source of power to what equipment is lost in the control room, the plant would have to shut down and would be down for at least a day. The cost of that in lost revenue would be on the order of $1 million per day.”
Denning’s scenario refers to power outages that are not tied to natural disasters and are not a safety hazard as long as backup power is available. These situations are the most common uses for the backup systems, as opposed to once-in-ageneration events such as what happened at Fukushima.
Most of the
99 nuclear plants in the U.S. went online in the 1960s and ‘70s, and there has been almost no building in recent years. Ohio has two of them — Davis-Besse and Perry — both of which are near Lake Erie.
Ametek’s nuclear business has remained steady despite the almost complete lack of new nuclear-plant construction. The company has maintained its sales because some of its competitors have stopped serving the nuclear market, and there remains demand for replacement systems.
“A lot of people, about 10 or 15 years ago, started getting out” of the nuclear market, said Jason Cotton, director/business manager for Ametek Solidstate. “They said this is more trouble than it’s worth.”
Ametek Solidstate, with about 195 employees in Columbus, is a small part of Ametek Inc., a Pennsylvania-based industrial conglomerate. The company is publicly traded, with a market value of about $17 billion.
The central Ohio factory has its roots in Solidstate Controls Inc., a maker of battery systems that started in 1962 and spent its early years in a small space on Oakland Park Avenue in North Linden. The founder was John Holscher, an engineer who also taught at Ohio State University. He sold the company, and it changed hands several more times before Ametek bought it in 2003.
In addition to battery-backup systems, the central Ohio plant makes batterycharging systems for forklifts and other electric vehicles used in warehouses. This business unit, Ametek Prestolite Power, has been growing, thanks to expansion of the logistics and warehousing industry.
“We’re riding that wave, and it’s been very good for us,” said Jeff Harrison, business manager of Ametek Prestolite.
The company’s nuclear business and replacement parts work remains steady.
Because the company’s products can last for more than 40 years, the parts business needs to fill orders for items that are not necessarily on the shelf. Sometimes, employees need to fabricate parts from scratch.
The ease with which the company maintains old systems underscores what employees say is an essential aspect of the place.
“Our philosophy is, ‘We’re going to keep you running,’” Wetta said.