The Commercial Nuclear Market

By Nancy Spring, Editor

Richard E. Reimels is the president of The Babcock & Wilcox Company Nuclear Power Generator Group Inc. (NPG), headquartered in Lynchburg, Va. NPG provides services and components to the worldwide commercial nuclear utility industry. Prior to being named to his current position in January 2007, Mr. Reimels was president of B&W Canada, responsible for the design and supply of nuclear and fossil generator equipment and services.

NPI: Babcock & Wilcox (B&W) is one of the few companies that continued manufacturing heavy components for the nuclear industry all these years. What do you have planned for the future?

Reimels: In commercial nuclear, we look at it as two markets. One is the new-build market—the industry calls it the nuclear renaissance—and our modular reactor would be part of that. Today I’d like to focus on the other market, the existing fleet of reactors.

There are 104 nuclear reactors operating in the U.S. and they produce about 20 percent of our electricity today. In Canada, where we also do a lot of work, there are 20 reactors in operation and they probably produce a little higher percentage. In Ontario, for instance, about 50 percent of their power comes from nuclear. Most of these reactors were put into service prior to 1980 so they are getting old. And most of them are now getting a license extension. They can get a 20-year lifetime extension that will drive most of these plants to an average age of over 60 years. One of our key focuses is to keep them running. Like an old car or an old house, they need a lot of repairs and maintenance.

One of the issues that we’re seeing now is for materials that have been irradiated, we are seeing different types of material fatigue. We have labs that can analyze the impact of that so we help support the utilities in finding ways to ensure that these plants can go for another 20 or even 40 years.

We do a lot of work on steam generators and the other components. Most units come down for inspection either once a year or once every 18 months. We go in and inspect that equipment to see how well it’s holding up and what kind of maintenance or repairs they need.

In the replacement market, one of the things the utilities in the U.S. have had to do is replace the steam generators as they got older. B&W has built replacements for all the technologies, like the B&W technologies that were built in the ’60s and ’70s, the Westinghouse technologies and another company called Combustion Engineering.

And they’re not just replacements in kind. They are redesigned. The utilities found materials that would last longer and to put those in you have to redesign the entire steam generator.

A Babcock & Wilcox worker adjusts a tube support plate assembly in a nuclear steam generator at the B&W facility in Cambridge, Ontario. Photo, B&W. Click here to enlarge image

NPI: Where do you build the steam generators?

Reimels: The majority are built in Cambridge, Ontario, and we have a facility in Mount Vernon, Indiana, which built most of the B&W components back in the ’60s and ’80s. We got our nuclear N-stamp back there a little over three years ago and so we’re doing some replacement reactor heads there, for Diablo Canyon for example, but the majority of the work over the last 20 years has been done at our Canadian facility. Indiana was doing work for our navy customer, so it was government work instead of commercial work.

NPI: Can you give me some specific examples of materials fatigue?

Reimels: On the steam generators, most of the original units were built with a tube that was Alloy 600 and that material was sensitive to stress corrosion cracking. By going to Alloy 690, the problem appears to have been solved. Units with the 690 material have been running about 15 years with no signs of stress corrosion cracking so far. And looking at the internals, we’ve gone to stainless steel.

NPI: Are there any of the U.S. reactors that still have steam generators made with Alloy 600?

Reimels: Most of the units have been replaced. B&W has the order right now to build the replacements for Davis-Besse and we just shipped two units to the Crystal River plant that were delivered last month and there may be one or two other units but that will probably cover the majority of those 104 reactors. On the Canadian side, for the Bruce Station we’re building the replacement steam generators there and then I think that’s probably it for steam generator replacements north of the border as well.

Another issue was dissimilar weld. For instance, if you’re welding on the reactor vessel or the pressurizer and piping coming off is another alloy steel, at those dissimilar welds there was stress corrosion cracking. There were a lot of fixes for that. We’re developing phase array technology that allows the utility to see through the pipe to determine the effects and how big they are. That allows them to determine if they have to do a repair or not. Otherwise, the NRC requires them to cut the weld out just to be safe.

NPI: What other areas is B&W involved in?

Reimels: The other things utilities are looking at are uprates to the existing plants, modifying the plant to get more power, so a unit that generated 1,000 MW now generates 1,100 MW. We’re in negotiations with three or four utilities to replace and upgrade condensers and heaters and that type of thing. There are still quite a few units that can be uprated. Typically, the payback is pretty good. Once nuclear plants are up and running, they are fairly low-cost generators of electricity. What would it cost you to put in a 100 MW gas plant or 100 MW of anything else? Basically, 100 MW of uprate is the cheapest alternative.

NPI: What other trends are you seeing?

Reimels: This is not an area where B&W is involved, but they continue to upgrade controls, going from analog to digital. You can get better inspection and with more instrumentation, you can better operate and maintain the plants. There is also a lot of work by the utilities improving operator training and security at these plants has been a big issue. They’re extending to 18 months or even two years between outages. That’s pretty remarkable for a 40-year-old unit.

We’re seeing a trend toward the modular reactors, like our mPower reactor. The NRC has been looking at them and will start licensing at least two modular reactors and the DOE is looking at programs to help them get through the licensing process. The value proposition seems to be very good.

NPI: What’s the size of those modulars?

Reimels: Ours is 125 MW and some are 30 or 40 MW, but you’re actually getting too small there in terms of what’s practical. We think for most of the larger utilities, 250 MW to 500 MW is the amount that fits their growth plans. The total capital cost for the bigger units is $8 billion plus for one unit, which is still a competitive price but there are few utilities that have a balance sheet that can support an $8 billion project. So the small reactors are more affordable, so to speak, and the risk is down in the sense that we are going to build the entire reactor in our facilities.

NPI: How is the mPower refueled?

Reimels: The design we have has a fuel cartridge. You run it for five years, then you take that bundle out and replace it. Our reactor is all underground and we have enough storage built in that we can store 60 years of fuel below grade. If we ever get a solution for spent fuel in the U.S., you still have the option of taking it out for reprocessing.

NPI: What’s your view of the international market?

Reimels: For the mPower, our intial thrust is in the U.S. but we are working with a European utility and a Canadian utility and as soon as we get it licensed and built here we’ll expand out there.

We know some of our service capabilities can be used worldwide. China has six units under construction and plans to build 30. We work with the folks in Washington and we’re keeping our eye on the Indian market—that’s the next big market we think—but our main thrust right now is in North America.

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