Nuclear power. The components in a nuclear power plant may weigh as much as 100 tons. Still, they have to be precisely manufactured. Machining of these components can take a year, and making an error is not an option.

Steam generators – heat exchangers: At 66 feet in height, the four steam generators in a nuclear reactor are often bigger than the reactor itself. The most delicate operation is the deep-hole drilling of up to 16,000 holes or the heat exchanger tubes.

Reactor pressure vessel: The core of a nuclear power plant requires a lot of different operations to achieve the extreme quality demands necessary to make the reactor vessel withstand a nuclear fission reaction.

Steam turbine shaft: Making a 33-foot-long turbine shaft requires hundreds of different tools and takes months of difficult work involving machining away some 20 tons of material for the final 70-ton shaft.

Steam turbine housing: Processes include milling, drilling, boring, turning, grooving and threading in huge gantry milling machines and vertical turning lathes.

Turbine blades: Blade manufacturing represents a different type of machining performed in optimized mill-turn machines, often with advanced 5-axis control systems.

Generator: The generator shaft is similar in size to the turbine shaft and requires many different operations, such as drilling of very deep holes with extreme demands for straightness.

Originally published in Metalworking World 1.2011, a business magazine published by Sandvik Coromant.