Alcoa 50k ton forging press

I don't know whether such things can or can't be made anymore, but it sure is fascinating to see how certain giant machines are almost strategic national assets, and compare when they were built. NIST deadweight machine seems like another thing in this class:

https://www.nist.gov/news-events/news/2016/06/million-pound-...

> I wonder how hard it would be to remake the entire supply chain to be able to build big things again.

8 out of the 10 heavy presses they built are still operational.

And here's a video of another 50K Ton press in action. It shows the chunk of steel before and after pressing. I can't really wrap my mind around the forces involved here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LpxWvkvAY8

Press light alloys for every aircraft ever since WW2. The Americans discovered that Germans were able to build better airplanes because of die forging presses like this (larger pressed metal pieces spanning the whole fuselage, instead of smaller pieces and more rivets)[1].

So the Air Force initiated the press program, leading to this thing. It's on the list of mechanical engineering landmarks[2] and it's my dream to see it one day.

People don't know how important this thing is.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_Press_Program

[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Historic_Mechanical_En...

I'm not saying this specific forging press was used but this class of machine is necessary to build large scale nuclear reactors.

>https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fu...

>For very large Generation III+ reactors, production of the pressure vessel requires, or is best undertaken by, forging presses of about 140-150 MN (14-15,000 tonnes) capacity which accept hot steel ingots of 500-600 tonnes. These are not common, and individual large presses do not have high throughput – about four pressure vessels per year appears to be common at present, fitted in with other work, though the potential is greater than this. Westinghouse was constrained as of 2009 in that the AP1000 pressure vessel closure head and three complex steam generator parts could only be made by JSW. Areva has a little more choice.

And then people wonder why nuclear power is so expensive... It's because the machines that are necessary to build your humongous power plants were built 50 years ago and have already been closed down or assigned to other jobs. The manufacturing industry behind nuclear power has deteriorated and the rebuilding of it is what's so expensive. When you are building your first few power plants you spend most of your time and money on specialty manufacturing hoping to squeeze in your order in-between the usual business. Corruption is usually visible through an inflated workforce. That workforce gets paid even if they do nothing because of manufacturing delays.

The idea of a monolithic nuclear power plant is flawed. You build a fleet of 30 of them all at once and then let them and their supporting manufacturing base decay for 50 years. Then you suddenly notice your old power plant is unsafe but you have to "keep quiet" or your profits will go down. Hope it keeps running until it reaches end of life but then something like Fukushima happens. Finally it is time to rebuild your fleet but since everyone who knows how to build nuclear plants is gone you're forced to start from scratch but just because your own industry has declined doesn't mean everyone else has stood still. Advancements with other technologies have been discovered and are only making business as usual harder to swallow. It would be better to do away with these large presses and build smaller reactors in higher quantities.

There are more details in the following articles:

https://www.cleveland.com/business/2012/02/alcoas_50000-ton_... (see useful diagram in this page on how the pressing process works. It also notes that the press makes parts of the F-35)

https://www.asme.org/wwwasmeorg/media/resourcefiles/aboutasm... (PDF of a past article by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, includes more technical details and older photos)

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/03/iron-gi... (some historical details on what motivated the program)