Industry publication, December 2001

NYC 9/11 Public Portal Document

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Nuclear Renaissance Converges On Life Extension and Upgrades New technologies offer some hope for once-dead market

0 nly a few years ago, no one was talk- clear Energy. It first went commercial in Uprate projects at the country’s 104 ing about nuclear power construe- the late 1990s at Tokyo Electric Power operating nuclear units can deliver a low !■

tion projects in the U.S. The Ener- Co.’s Kashiwazaki-Kariwa station. dollar-per-kw cost, making them top- gy Information Administration estimated Unlike previous reactors, the advanced notch competitors to other sources of new then that over half of the country’s nu- designs feature “passive safety systems,” capacity, proponents claim. Now pending clear plants would cease operation and which assure plant safety using natural at NRC are 14 license applications for shut down by 2015. Interest in license re­ forces such as gravity. GE’s ABWR features power uprates, which would add more newal appeared low; decommissioning a host of safety innovations, including than 1,000 Mw of new nuclear capacity. was the industry’s only hot market niche. internal recirculation pumps that elimi- Some industry analysts estimate that as How things have changed. In 2000, nate pressure-vessel piping connections much as 8,000 Mw can be added in the Constellation Nuclear’s Calvert Cliffs site below the level of the top of the core to U.S. if the full potential of uprates is in Lusby, Md., and Duke Energy Corp.’s ensure that the core remains covered in exploited by today’s fleet of reactors. Oconee station in Charlotte became the the case of a piping failure. Nuclear operators are also considering first U.S. nuclear plants to complete reh- deato digital upgrades of instrumentation and censing, successfully extending their 40- .................................... controls systems. Studies show that these year licenses for an additional 20 years. Despite upbeat talk, many analysts see could mitigate plant scrams, forced out- Today, some 40 additional nuclear units regulatory issues, public opinion and in- ages and other operational problems. Po­ have either filed renewal applications or stitutional realities of new nukes as only tential designs are based on technology advised the Nuclear Regulatory Commis- slighdy more favorable than before. Real proven in fossil fuel plants and in process sion of their intent to do so. The vast construction projects are still six to 10 industries. Exelon has initiated such up- majority ofthe remaining units operating years away. But some say near-term pros- grades at its LaSalle and Quad-Cities

la also are set to renew in the next few years,

............................ The licensing turnaround has prompted pects are brightening. The partially fin- ished Watts Bar Unit 1 project was reacti- vated in the mid-1990s, bringing 1,270 Mw of new capacity to the Tennessee Vai- plants as part of a plan to improve per­ formance and reliability of reactor water level and recirculation flow control sys- terns. New control systems will remove predictions that licensing of a new ley Authority and paving the way for oth- obsolete components, provide redundan- nuclear plant may be at hand, for the first er restarts such as Browns Ferry Unit 1. cy for improved reliability, and allow per­ time since the 1979 Three Mile Island ac- Two other units at that site and two at the formance of online diagnostics and main- cident. Two scenarios have emerged: A Sequoyah station have already restarted tenance to optimize outage efficiency. □ reactor already NRC design-certified since being shut down in 1985. By Robert Swanekamp could be added to an existing plant site, or a small, modular reactor with lower costs and shorter construction schedule could be built at a greenfield site. Chicago-based Exelon advocates the ini'" first option, borrowing the 110-Mw peb­ ble-bed modular reactor being developed in South Africa. While similar to other gas- cooled reactors so far unsuccessfully tried in the U.S., the technology makes more sla:*v ■«' sense in a market-driven power business * ..u than multibillion-dollar conventional reactors, says Exelon CEO Corbin McNeil. But Richmond-based Dominion Ener­ gy Inc. believes that a “familiar” design advanced through evolution would be faster and cheaper. One key example is the AP-1000, Westinghouse Electric Co.’s 1,000-Mw advanced pressurized water reactor. It is set for NRC certification in S’ I late 2004. Another is the advanced boil- ing water reactor, developed by GE Nu- GOOL Nuclear work was dormant, but rellcenslng and technology fixes are heating up.

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