US-based Westinghouse is working to resume production of fuel for VVER-440 reactors, said company president José Emeterio Gutierrez in an interview on 29 January with Energoatom Ukrainy, the official journal of Ukraine’s state-owned nuclear utility Energoatom. He said Westinghouse will be ready to supply fuel for the VVER-440 after signing a commercial agreement with Energoatom.
He noted that Westinghouse had previously supplied VVER-440 fuel to Finland’s Loviisa nuclear plant, and that an updated design of such fuel would be suitable for reactors at Ukraine’s Rovno station. Finland sourced fuel from Westinghouse for its two units at Loviisa from 2001 to 2007, after which it switched to Russian fuel company Tvel (part of state nuclear corporation Rosatom).
The oldest two of Rovno's four units have VVER-440 units. Ukraine’s 13 of other nuclear power units all have VVER-1000 reactors. Referring to a meeting in August 2018 with Rovno NPP engineers, Gutierrez confirmed that Energoatom plans to start using Westinghouse fuel inthe VVER-1000 unit at Rovno 3 by 2021. Currently Westinghouse’s nuclear fuel is used in six of Ukraine’s 15 power units - South Ukraine 2&3 and Zaporozhye 1, 3, 4 and 5.
Energoatom launched the project to qualify Westinghouse fuel in 2000, and in 2008 Energoatom and Westinghouse Electric Sweden (then part of Toshiba) signed a contract to ship fuel to three or six Ukrainian reactors in 2011-2015. However, during trial use at South Ukraine in 2012, the fuel became deformed causing significant damage to the reactor. Ukraine subsequently suspended the use of Westinghouse fuel pending its redesign. Following the 2014 change of government, the contract was revived and extended and in early 2018, Energoatom and Westinghouse Electric further extended the contract until 2025.
Westinghouse (now part of Canada’s Brookfield following bankruptcy and restructuring) and its eight European consortium partners in March 2018 announced completion of a European Union (EU) funded project aimed at diversifying the nuclear fuel supply for Russian designed VVER-440 reactors in Europe. “The consortium has developed a conceptual fuel design and determined how the manufacturing and supply chain can be reestablished to build and ship VVER-440 fuel assemblies, similar to what was done by Westinghouse and ENUSA for the Loviisa nuclear power plant in Finland in 2001-2007,” the company said.
Westinghouse has been leading the project European Supply of Safe Nuclear Fuel (ESSANUF) project since September 2015. Its partners include: VUJE (Slovakia), ÚJV Rež (Czech Republic), Lappeenranta University of Technology (Finland), the National Nuclear Laboratory (UK), NucleoCon (Slovakia), the National Science Centre Kharkov Institute of Physics and Technology (Ukraine), the European Commission Joint Research Centre in Karlsruhe and ENUSA Industrias Avanzadas (Spain). The ESSAUNF programme is funded by the EU’s Euratom Research and Training Programme (2014-2018) which forms part of Horizon 2020 (H2020).
Five EU member states, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Finland, Hungary and Slovakia, operate Russian reactors – four VVER-1000s and 14 VVER-440s. They currently receive fuel supplies from Russian fuel company Tvel.
Fuel diversification is developing in two directions as Tvel has already developed TVS-K fuel for Western-design pressurised water reactors, which is undergoing pilot operation at Sweden’s Ringhals nuclear plant. In 2019/20 the fuel assemblies will be discharged from Ringhals for post-irradiation examination in hot cells and analysis of design criteria compliance. The results will be presented to the safety authority in Sweden. However, Vattenfall Nuclear Fuel and Tvel have already signed a commercial contract for the supply of TVS-K fuel starting in 2021.
Photo: Rovno nuclear plant has two VVER-440 reactors
