Roxtec cable and pipe seals provide tested and verified protection against concurrent and consequential hazards to ensure safe long-term operation of nuclear power plants and new nuclear projects, such as SMRs. Use our sealing solutions to maintain safety when one event causes another and the threats accumulate. Use them also to limit the effect and severity of occurring external and internal hazards.
By standardizing with our modular-based seals in walls, floors, and cabinets, you add flexibility and scalability to your project. Roxtec seals allow for changes, provide spare capacity for expansion and are perfect for construction sites as well as for serial and modular production of small modular reactors.
Efficient multi-hazard protection
A nuclear power plant can face multiple hazards simultaneously. An earthquake can be followed by extreme weather, fire, and flooding. Redundancy and diversification safety systems can only be maintained if hazards are prevented from spreading by barriers and separation systems. The goal of the defense in depth principle is to ensure that even if one or more barriers fail, there are reliable additional layers of protection. Roxtec mechanical seals are tested for everything from seismic events, effects of lightning strikes and electromagnetic interference to fire, gas, and flooding. They offer great fill ratio and immediate performance. You handle high cable density directly – without any need for drying or curing.
Discover Roxtec sealing solutions for nuclear power projects
Successful sequential testing
Roxtec cable and pipe seals are passive protection systems designed to protect against multiple concurrent and consequential hazards, internal and external as well as human induced and natural. We have performed sequential tests exposing our products to a series of hazards, in line with requirements set after the Fukushima accident. The material was exposed to irradiation and a process of ageing, and then the sealing modules were installed in frames and successfully tested for seismic events, gas, water, and fire.
Read more about protection against different hazards below or in the section Certified protection.
For further information, please contact:
Gavin Cornall, Global Segment Manager – Power, Roxtec.
Frequently asked questions
A concurrent hazard is one that occurs at the same time as another, such as extreme weather during a seismic event. A consequential hazard is caused by an initiating event, such as flooding that follows a tsunami or fire that follows an explosion. Safety cases are expected to consider combinations rather than isolated events, because a barrier that holds against one hazard may be defeated by the second.
EN 1366-3 covers penetration seals in European fire resistance testing, UL 1479 covers through-penetration firestops in North America, and the IMO 2010 FTP Code applies where marine derived class ratings are used. Reaction to fire is classified under EN 13501-1. Jet fire performance is assessed to ISO 22899-1:2021. National regulators may add plant specific qualification requirements on top of these.
Yes, where the system holds type approvals for each hazard in the same configuration. Roxtec cable and pipe seals are certified for fire integrity, watertightness, gas-tightness, blast load protection, and electromagnetic shielding, with Ex rated variants for hazardous areas. The important check is that the approvals apply to the specific frame, module and compression combination being installed, not to the product family in general.
They stop flood water travelling along cable routes between compartments, which is one of the propagation paths internal flooding assessments have to close. They also have to carry hydrostatic load without deforming, resist material degradation over the plant life, and be positioned where inspection and maintenance are practical.
Visual inspection is the baseline, which is why area efficient, orderly installations are easier to verify than dense unstructured penetrations. Digital transit management tools can be used to record what is installed in each opening, what spare capacity remains, and what has changed since handover, which supports both periodic safety review and modification work.
