US-based Holtec has been awarded the contract to provide dry storage systems for Taiwan’s Chinshan and Kuosheng NPPs each with two shut-down boiling water reactor (BWR) units. Chinshan 1&2 were shut down in 2018 and 2019; Kuosheng 1 was shut in 2021 and Kuosheng 2 in 2023 in line with Taiwan’s nuclear phase-out policy.
“This fleetwide BWR used fuel storage contract is possibly the largest in monetary value placed to date in the used fuel management sector of the nuclear industry,” Holtec said. The contract is for more than 150 multipurpose canister-based dry storage systems and associated equipment, as well as designing and constructing structurally hardened dry storage facilities at each of the two sites and providing commissioning services.
The facilities will be licensed by Taiwan’s environmental and nuclear regulators, and the programme will be carried out in partnership with Taiwan Power Company (Taipower) “and certain highly respected Taiwanese engineering and construction firms”, Holtec said. The company is also establishing Holtec Taiwan, and building a regional operation centre, it added.
Cooperation between Holtec and Taipower began more than 35 years ago, with Taipower’s adoption of Holtec technology in the 1990s helping “to stimulate several of the innovations that today define Holtec’s global leadership in used fuel management”, Holtec said.
“We celebrate the return of TPC’s [Taipower’s] four BWRs as valued clients after more than three decades of hiatus since our services to their BWR fleet began,” Holtec President of Global Opportunities Rick Springman said, adding that the renewed collaboration will generate “substantial direct and derivative value” for both Holtec and Taipower. “This contract represents an important opportunity to deepen our decades-old close relationship with TPC which has been grounded in mutual trust and a shared commitment to protecting the health and safety of the people of Taiwan”, he said.
