Siemens enters Chinese market
Siemens KWU has signed its first nuclear contract in China, for the supply of instrumentation and control equipment worth DM300 million ($160 million) for the Lianyungang nuclear power plant which is currently under construction. The purchasers are Jiangsu Nuclear Power Corp, Lianyungang, and the China Nuclear Energy Industry Corporation, Beijing.
Siemens will supply its Teleperm XP operational instrumentation and control equipment and Teleperm XS safety equipment.
Siemens expands in I&C
Siemens is involved in upgrading I&C systems in 16 plants around the world, in both the East and West. Most recently, it received an order from the Beznau PWR plant in Switzerland Teleperm XS which will be installed at the two units during refuelling outages in 2000 and 2001. Central to this replacement is the reactor protection and control system.
Stone and Webster to dismantle Haddam Neck
Connecticut Yankee Atomic Power Company has awarded a contract to decommission the 600 MWe PWR Haddam Neck power station to Stone and Webster. The plant, designed by Stone and Webster, first produced electricity in 1968. Economics forced its closure during December 1996.
Dismantlement and decontamination will take 6-7 years. Connecticut Yankee will be responsible for overall project management and engineering. Stone and Webster will deal with the physical removal of contaminated systems, structures and components. The work is the first large-scale decommissioning project in New England. The US market for decommissioning is likely to be in the region of $15 billion over the next 10 years.
Calvert Cliffs’ SG replacement contract
The Steam Generating Team, a company owned by Morrison Knudsen Corporation and Duke Engineering, has won a $200 million contract to supply four steam generators to Baltimore Gas & Electric’s Calvert Cliffs PWR power plant in Maryland. BG&E have applied for a licence extension, the first in the US. The generators will replace those currently in operation, with the first replacement in 2002.
Westinghouse reload for Krsko & EDF
Westinghouse’s Commercial Nuclear Fuels Division has won two major European contracts. It is to provide five reloads of 16×16 Westinghouse fuel assemblies to the Krsko plant in Solvenia and a 3 year supply of control rods to Electricité de France.
AEA Tech takes PASCE
AEA Technology is planning to acquire the California based software technology company EA Systems. EA’s programming expertise will allow AEA to expand its services to the power generating industries.
EA Systems has developed the PASCE software suite of applications for plant design and engineering a plant life cycle data management.
ABB reload for Tihange
The Belgian utility Electrabel and its engineering arm Tractebel have ordered a reload fuel batch from ABB Atom for the Tihange 2 plant. The order is worth about $7 million.
The batch is the fifth covered by the contract between Tractebel and ABB Atom. The fuel will be shipped during the autumn of 1999.
Westinghouse get GAPPIPE rights
Westinghouse Energy Systems Europe (WESE) has acquired the full rights to GAPPIPE technology for application in European plants. This follows six years co-operation with R L Cloud Associates, who developed the “limit stop” pipe supports.
Limit stops are passive devices designed to replace pipe snubbers, avoiding the associated in service testing cost. They are also more reliable than snubbers, presenting no risk of blockage or loss of functionality.
GAPPIPE is the related computer software and associated technical justification package for response spectrum analysis of piping systems with non-linear gapped supports.
WESE carried out the first plant-wide limit stop application at Vandellos 2 in Spain. Out of 288 snubbers remaining in the plant, only 17 were left in place. A snubber reduction programme is now underway at the Krsko plant in Slovenia.
MHI steam generators
The Belgian company Electrabel has contracted Mitsubishi Heavy Industries to build three steam generators for a nuclear power plant in Belgium. The contract is worth $35 million and is part of a project to increase Belgium’s capacity.
Japan has no plans to commission new PWRs in the near future and a s a result Mitsubishi is concentrating on maintenance and overseas work.
Mobile characterising for WIPP
Mobile Characterisation Services has announced the expansion of its on-site assay services to include LLW characterisation, reclassification and TRU to LLW and LLW to unrestricted release. MCS is jointly-owned by BNFL Instruments, Canberra Industries and VJ Technologies, which offers the skills available within the three companies. The company characterises transuranic wastes from Department of Energy facilities in the US prior to their shipment to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), in New Mexico.
MCS, based at Albuquerque New Mexico, claims to be the largest worldwide mobile company focused on nuclear materials assay. It is fully certified to meet all aspects of the WIPP’s acceptance criteria and is currently operating at Rocky Flats, the Nevada test site and the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory.
Gamma cameras for Sellafield
BNFL Instruments is to supply gamma camera systems to Sellafield. They will be used to assist in sorting and classifying historic ILW produced during the early years of the UK’s nuclear programme. The ILW includes Magnox fuel cladding and some fuel residues. The waste will be recovered from two storage facilities (B30 & B41), sorted and encapsulated in 3m3 boxes for ultimate transfer to a deep repository.
The contract is worth £1.8 million; BNFL Instruments will provide four cameras which will be installed between 1999 and 2001.
The retrieved ILW will be imaged in the existing storage buildings, shipped to a new Box Encapsulation Plant and imaged again. Fuel residues will be moved using remote handling devices at each stage. The cameras locate the fuel residues and characterise the ILW in terms of the mix of gamma emitting isotopes, using Low Resolution Gamma Spectometry.
Management buys Steels
The management of Steels Engineering, based in Sunderland in the UK, has bought out the company from Deutsche Babcock. The management team is headed by Paul Duncan, former director of NEI Parsons; Richard Maudslay, former managing director of Rolls-Royce Industrial Power Group is to be non-executive chairman.
Steels intends to concentrate on its core markets of specialist fabrication and induction bending and assembly of heavy duty pipework for the offshore, power generation and nuclear industries. “We plan to generate further growth through development of niche markets in nuclear site services and induction bending,” said Maudslay.
Starmet to convert UF6 in US
USEC has awarded a $13 million contract to Starmet CMI, to convert depleted uranium hexafluoride at its Barnwell, South Carolina facility. The contract contains a follow-on option which could result in Starmet ultimately receiving $26 million. The Barnwell site is the only licensed facility in North America capable of converting uranium hexafluoride to metal and oxide products.
ROV’s high tech cleaning equipment
ROV Technologies has supplied a multi-function robotic system to ComEd’s Byron Station. Designed to remove the silt and sludge that builds up in cooling towers in a way that makes it possible to remove the material while the plant is on line. It can also be retooled to operate in different environments.
The system involves a mobile delivery trailer and a crawling vehicle. The trailer houses the control and monitoring equipment, computers and video and it also has a maintenance area, spare parts and a lifting crane. The crawling vehicle has electro-hydraulic mechanisms at the machine, re-configurable tracks and equipment platform, and a positional pump assembly.
PECO wins fuel study contract
Alliant Utilities, owner of the Duane Arnold BWR plant, has awarded PECO Nuclear the contract to perform an independent nuclear fuel cycle study. The aim of the study is to evaluate a transition from a 18 month to a 24 month refuelling cycle. It will also consider a transition to advanced fuel designs.
It is the third contract PECO has won for a nuclear power plant study since the beginning of 1997. The contracts have been awarded partly due to PECO’s success in design and operation of 24 month BWR fuel cycles at Peach Bottom and Limerick.
NNC wins MOX plant contract
NNC Manufacturing has won a £700 000 contract to design and manufacture remote fuel handling equipment for an extension at BNFL’s MOX Plant under construction at Sellafield.
Two contracts have been signed with BNFL Engineering Ltd to build a Fuel Transfer Machine, Separator Insertion Machine and a Fuel Holder Loading machine. The operations will be controlled remotely by closed circuit TV. NNC says winning the contract confirms its capability to integrate complex electro-mechanical systems and its experience in high integrity manufacturing using specialist stainless steels for radioactive environments.