345 kV cable, where the plan comes before the terms.

High-pressure fluid-filled cable is the classic 345 kV underground construction: three paper-insulated cables inside a steel pipe, held under oil pressure by a pumping plant. The pipe is the pressure vessel and the oil is both insulation medium and coolant, so the three parts are reviewed together.

High grade XLPE at this voltage uses a very thick insulation wall with semicon screens, a metallic sheath and a heavy jacket. It avoids the oil system but demands just as much care at joints and terminations, where the highest electrical stresses sit and where most failures begin.

A photograph of a drum does not describe a 345 kV lot. The visit establishes drum diameter and weight, whether the yard can take a crane, how the cable is supported, whether the ends are sealed, and what the route out looks like. Terms written before that are guesswork for both sides.

The visit also settles who does what. Cutting, oil containment, drum building and loading can each sit with the owner or with the buyer, and the split is agreed on site rather than assumed in an email. That conversation is usually shorter than the paperwork that follows it.

Large cable drums and long pipe sections exceed ordinary legal dimensions. Oversize and overweight permits, escort rules and route restrictions apply, and they take time to arrange. A collection date that ignores the permit is not a date, and a route survey often changes the plan after the first attempt.

Weight is the other constraint. A drum a yard forklift can lift is a different job from one that needs a crane and a lowboy, and the difference is settled by the tag or a measured estimate before anything is booked. Loading equipment is named in the plan, not improvised on the day.

• Drum diameter, width and weight, from the tag or an estimate.
• Whether the load needs a lowboy, a reel trailer or two cranes.
• Permit class and route, including bridge or overpass limits.
• Oil containment where a fluid-filled section is being drained.

Isolation proof comes first: the circuit identified, the run de-energised, isolated, locked out and grounded, and the release signed by someone with the authority to sign it. Test records, oil records and joint records follow, and each one is matched to the exact section being removed rather than to the run as a whole.

Cable that has been cut without a plan is a salvage lot. Cable that has been isolated, documented and cut to a handling plan is a transmission asset with a known history, and the difference between the two is the paperwork and the loading plan, not the copper inside either one.