Page 50 - July-August 2012
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Nuclear Plant Journal, July-August 2012
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As a business, we have developed
a portfolio of solutions based on the
NRC’s criteria, which are the original
12 recommendations. Then, GEH works
individually with each customer to
understand what their gaps are to the Tier
1 items and which are the orders they have
to comply with now. We also understand
that, although the orders have been issued,
the final Interim Staff Guidance (ISG)
with the specific criteria is not available
until the end of August 2012.
4.
Are GE Hitachi Nuclear’s multiple
portfolios related to hardware, software,
or design?
Our portfolio includes all of these
aspects.
Our hardware portfolio includes
solutions to mitigate all phases of EA-
12-049 Mitigation Strategies for Beyond
Design Basis Events. Examples include:
Turbine Water Lubricated pump, which
requires no electrical power, no personnel
for black-start/operations, minimizes
preventive maintenance, and mitigates
control system obsolescence of existing
systems; Air Cooled Heat Exchanger
which provides alternate ultimate heat
sink capabilities; and large scale AC
generators with both bus and station load
capacities.
From a software perspective, GEH
has NRC approved methodologies for
use in Defense in Depth analysis, margin
improvements and licensing support, etc.
GEH has the unique expertise of being
the BWR OEM and as the performer of
many plants’ Station Blackout analysis.
This coupled with in-depth knowledge
of the design basis and available margins
for various systems places us in a unique
position to provide software and design
solutions for our customers.
5.
How GEH interacts with the BWR
owners group?
GEH is a vendor to the BWR
Owners Group. We have done a few
things for them post-Fukushima, but
as a group of owners, they decide what
they want to focus on. One of the things
they have done post-Fukushima is to
create a subcommittee, the Fukushima
Steering Committee, which focuses on
the post-Fukushima landscape. They
have a couple of subcommittees looking
at equipment reliability and containment
integrity.
6.
What is GEH’s involvement in
Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant?
Immediately after the earthquake and
tsunami, GEH set up a command center
at our headquarters in Wilmington. We
wanted to support our customer, TEPCO,
as well to bring the 42 GEH workers that
were performing an outage at Fukushima
Daiichi when the events occurred home
safely. The command center was staffed
24/7 with our senior leadership, including
our top engineers. Also, we had people
from all over the world were coming to
Wilmington to help us manage the events.
TEPCO was in the midst of a significant
crisis as they were busy maintaining the
event, but we were very quick to offer our
assistance to them. So I think it’s important
to note that from the initial hours after the
quake had happened, we were there every
step of the way. In fact, Hitachi-GE, our
alliance partner, has 200 people on the
grounds today at Fukushima helping with
cleanup and recovery efforts.
We continue to have on-going
safety enhancement discussions with
the Japanese utilities understanding
where their gaps and vulnerabilities are
to complete their stress tests and helping
them find correct solutions to close that
gap so they can come back online.
7.
What is GE Hitachi’s contribution
in ensuring hydrogen mitigation and
control?
Hydrogen mitigation and control
is one of the elements in the Tier 3
Recommendation from the NRC. The
ACRS committee has asked the staff to
look at hydrogen mitigation control and
consider bringing it to a more near term
element however, at this point in time, it
is still a Tier 3 item. The industry position
is to mitigate – if you can mitigate for
core dislocation, then you mitigate
hydrogen production and you keep it at
a level that’s easily controlled by your
current preventative measures. That is
one positive by-product of implementing
the FLEX strategy.
Should the NRC or any other
regulatory body go down the path of
wanting to look at hydrogen control and
mitigation for beyond design basis, GEH
is positioned to provide our customers
with a design and placement of Passive
Hydrogen Recombiners to mitigate
this type of beyond design basis event
environment.
Contact: Michael Tetuan, GE Hitachi
Nuclear Energy; telephone: (910) 819-
7055, email:
.
