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NuclearPlantJournal.com Nuclear Plant Journal, July-August 2014
A Closer
Look on
US Policy
By Danny Roderick, Westinghouse
Electric Company.
Danny Roderick
Danny Roderick joined Westinghouse
Electric Company as president and chief
executive officer on Sept. 26, 2012. He
joined Westinghouse
with more than 30
years of proven
performance within
the nuclear industry.
Before his
Westinghouse
appointment, Mr.
Roderick was senior
vice president,
Nuclear Plant
Projects, with GE-
Hitachi (GEH)
Nuclear Energy, where
he managed all facets
of new and existing
nuclear plant projects.
Mr. Roderick also was site operations
director and plant general manager at
Progress Energy’s Crystal River Nuclear
Plant. As the company’s vice president of
Nuclear Projects and Construction, he also
managed a multibillion-dollar new-nuclear
expansion program.
Mr. Roderick has a bachelor’s degree from
Lake Erie College and a master’s degree
in Operations Management from the
University of Arkansas.
An interview by Newal Agnihotri, Editor
of Nuclear Plant Journal at the Nuclear
Energy Assembly in Scottsdale, Arizona on
May 20, 2014.
1.
What were the most exciting projects in
the last one year?
This has been a really good year for
Westinghouse froma couple of perspectives,
and the most exciting was setting the
modules and moving the AP1000
®
nuclear
plant projects forward. The really large
CA20 modules were set at Vogtle and V.C.
Summer, and those plants are coming out of
the ground.
We continued growing our nuclear fuel
business. We created a lot of new strate-
gic relationships, including selling in the
Ukraine, a traditionally Russian market.
We have also entered into an agreement
with the Ontario Power Generation (OPG)
to access the CANDU market. The team-
ing of the intellectual property of OPG and
the service deployment
model of Westing-
house opens an excit-
ing new market for us.
2.
Could you put a
spotlight on the status
of your Bulgaria, UK
and Canada projects?
Bulgaria evaluat-
ed all of the technolo-
gies available today
and reached a conclu-
sion that they would
like to eventually build
a fleet of AP1000 nu-
clear plants to handle
their in-country energy
needs and possibly generate electricity for
export. Since selecting Westinghouse’s
technology, we have been able to work
closely with the Bulgarian government,
moving forward into an engineering and
equipment procurement type of contract.
Later this year, we hope to bid out the con-
struction part of the Bulgaria project. I
think it is really important for that region
to have a strong U.S. presence and to have
good commitment ties between a U.S. com-
pany like Westinghouse and Bulgaria.
Primarily the contract toward which we
are working with Bulgaria will encompass
engineering, equipment and procurement
(EEP). When it’s all said and done, it
will be an engineering, procurement and
construction (EPC) contract.
The U.K. NuGen project is an
opportunity that differs from the Bulgaria
project in that it is a joint venture between
GDF SUEZ and Toshiba. Westinghouse
will be an EPC contractor to that consortium
of 60 percent Toshiba and 40 percent GDF
SUEZ. That ownership structure will change
when the project enters the operational
phase, at which time GDF SUEZ will take
a larger share. Throughout the negotiations,
we have learned much about the needs of
GDF SUEZ and Toshiba, and how we can
help them in the U.K. market. The land
option agreement has been made with the
U.K. government, and the shareholder
agreement has been finalized between GDF
SUEZ and Toshiba.
Westinghouse has a significant
portion of the existing pressurized water
reactor market. We also continue to grow
our boiling water reactor market share.
We took a hard look at potential growth
areas in relation to our deployment
models. One market that we thought
was underserviced was the Canadian
CANDU reactors. We needed more design
information about the Canadian reactors.
Ontario Power Generation (OPG) has all
of that information. OPG was seeking a
more global export impact. It made good
business sense to combine Westinghouse’s
delivery model, global export experience
and extensive global deployment model for
nuclear energy products and services with
OPG’s intellectual property in order to join
together to export services for the CANDU
units.
In addition, we also have common
interest in new build projects. OPG has
expressed interest in increasing their project
management expertise by working with
Westinghouse. We are working on several
fronts that could pull in OPG expertise,
including new units, the nuclear services
business supporting operating plants and
also plant decommissioning. We think we
can add significant value to the marketplace
teaming with Ontario Power Generation.
3.
Is Westinghouse considering selling
fuel in the VVER (Russian) territory?
TheRussianmarket is absolutely closed
to the rest of the world. Westinghouse offers
healthy competition in markets outside of
Russia where VVER units are installed. It
isn’t an East versus West comparison. It’s
a market that has no competition right now.
We think such competition will help lower
the cost of fuel and encourage better fuel
designs going forward. The Russians are
allowed to sell uranium into the United
States, but the U.S. nuclear industry is not
allowed to sell anything into Russia. Where
we can and where it makes sense, we would
like to open up competition for nuclear fuel.
It is not a threatening situation. It simply is
good business in a global economy, just like
