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Pequea Township Supervisor Virginia Brady was concerned when she entered Columbia High School Monday night.
Township road workers had told her two giant steam generators headed through Lancaster County, from Maryland to Three Mile Island, were going to be steered through the northbound tunnel of Route 272 in Pequea Township.
Brady knows the southbound tunnel is taller and wider.
"I was concerned about how they were going to get past the tunnels, and they told me tonight they are using the one on the southbound side," she said. "I feel a whole lot better now."
Brady was one of a handful of people who turned out at the school Monday to hear directly from the people orchestrating the moving of the two giant generators from Port Deposit, Md., to TMI sometime in September exactly how they plan to accomplish the feat.
And those in attendance heard substantial new details about the move, which is being overseen by AREVA Inc. — the French company that's building the two 70-foot-long, 510-ton steam generators for Exelon Nuclear, which operates TMI.
The generators are being built in France and will be shipped across the Atlantic Ocean and up the Chesapeake Bay to Port Deposit.
The route the generators will follow through Lancaster County has not yet been finalized, as AREVA works to get permits from PennDOT and the state Department of Environmental Protection.
But AREVA officials Monday night displayed a map showing the proposed route. In that route, the generators will be moved through 10 townships and one borough in Lancaster County.
The generators each will be transported on 26-axle self-propelled flatbed trailers north on Route 272 from Little Britain Township to the intersection with Route 741 in Willow Street.
From there they will head west on Route 741, continuing on Long Lane along the Conestoga River to Conestoga Boulevard.
They will cross the Conestoga River on the River Road bridge and then follow River Road north until it turns into Route 441.
The generators will follow Route 441 through Columbia, over Chickies Hill past Marietta and all the way to TMI.
The 70-mile journey from Port Deposit to TMI is expected to take 20 days, because the vehicles transporting the generators move at a top speed of about 3 mph.
A small army of 100 workers is expected to accompany the generators in a column about a mile long, said John Rorquist of Michael Baker Jr. Inc. — the Pittsburgh-area engineering consulting firm that has mapped out the overland journey.
According to Rorquist, the trip will take the generators over 20 bridges that either will have to be braced to carry the 850-ton combined weight of each generator and transporter, or, in three cases, bypassed altogether.
On Route 272 in Pequea Township, the generators will exit the highway and a temporary crossing will be built to carry them over Pequea Creek.
The same thing will be done to bypass the bridge on Route 441 over Chickies Creek, although two temporary crossings will be needed there, because the generators will have to cross both Chickies Creek and Donegal Creek east of the Route 441 bridge.
The third bridge that must be bypassed, Rorquist said, is the Route 441 span over Route 30. The northbound generators will be taken down to Route 30 on a temporary ramp, cross all four lanes of traffic and then travel back uphill to Route 441 on another temporary ramp.
Eighteen traffic signals along the proposed travel route will have to be temporarily lowered, along with numerous utility wires, and trees will have to be cut, all to give the generators the vertical clearance they need to pass.
Ron Brown, project manager for the highway division of York-based Kinsley Construction, said his company will be responsible for preparing the roadway ahead of the generators and then restoring things to their natural order behind them.
To keep traffic tie-ups to a minimum, Brown said, his crews will be working in close quarters with the convoy.
"We'll have one group lay down a traffic signal in the front, for example, and then as soon as everybody's past, we'll have another group put it right back up," he said.
As the convoy moves, Rorquist said, the plan calls for rolling traffic stoppages along the mile or so from the front of the convoy to the back.
"We'll do our best to allow cross traffic to move, as long as we're not blocking an intersection, but through-traffic will be detoured around us," he said.
The convoy will only move during daylight, except in Columbia when it crosses Route 30 at Route 441, which will be the only nighttime operation, to avoid blocking Route 30 during the day.
On all other nights, the convoy vehicles will be parked at predetermined locations along the route.
An AREVA official on Monday noted that many of the 100 workers who will be assigned to the convoy will be quartered in local hotels and will be eating and shopping at local establishments.
"There's going to be a pretty significant economic impact to the local communities while this is going on," she said.
From PennDOT, AREVA needs a "super load" permit to move the giant generators through Lancaster County.
According to a Pennsylvania state trooper who attended Monday's briefing — and who declined to be named — all super loads in the state are escorted for their entire journeys by state police officers.
The trooper said he went to Monday's meeting to gather information about the move so state police can figure out how many officers will be needed and when they'll be needed for the detail.
"This is certainly going to be something to watch," Brady said.
Other information sessions similar to Monday's are scheduled for:
• 7 to 8:30 p.m. today at Port Deposit VFW Hall, 520 Susquehanna River Road, Port Deposit, Md.
• 7 to 8:30 p.m. Wednesday in the Solanco High School cafeteria, 585 Solanco Road, Quarryville.
• Officials also will attend a Conoy Township supervisors meeting at 7:30 p.m. Thursday in the Conoy municipal office.
E-mail: preilly@lnpnews.com
