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NuclearPlantJournal.com Nuclear Plant Journal, July-August 2016
Preserving
our Assets
By Gary Mignogna, AREVA Inc.
Gary Mignogna
Gary Mignogna is the President and
Chief Executive Officer of AREVA
Inc., the U.S.-based subsidiary of
global energy company AREVA Group.
Mignogna’s career
with the company
began when he
was a student
working through his
university’s co-op
program. Through
his years at the
company, he built
technical experience
in engineering
design and analyses,
services tooling and
equipment design,
and component and
welding engineering.
To this foundation,
Mignogna added
project engineering, product line
management, and business development.
As he demonstrated and honed his strong
leadership skills, Mignogna advanced
to executive positions of greater
responsibility and was selected to lead
AREVA Inc. in June 2014.
Mignogna has been a member of the
Nuclear Strategic Issues Advisory
Committee since 2007. He is currently
a member of the Nuclear Energy
Institute Board of Directors, Executive
Committee, and Nominating Committee.
Mignogna earned Bachelor’s and
Master’s degrees in Mechanical
Engineering from Drexel University,
and holds a master’s degree in Business
Administration from Lynchburg College.
An interview by Newal Agnihotri, Editor
of Nuclear Plant Journal, at the Nuclear
Energy Institute’s Nuclear Energy Assembly
in Miami, Florida on May 24, 2016.
1.
How do you reduce cost and increase
power at the nuclear power plants?
There are several ways that AREVA
supports the nuclear energy industry’s
efforts to reduce cost and increase power
at nuclear energy facilities. As part of our
commitment to sustaining and advancing
the industry, we work with our customers
to preserve the operational excellence
of the existing fleet. In fact, a customer
using our technology won the Nuclear
Energy Institute’s Best of the Best Top
Innovative Practice Award for six of the
last seven years.
With uprates and
modernizations, we can
extract more megawatts
out of existing facilities,
an approach that is
less expensive than
constructing new gas
plants.
While
gas
has one-half to one-
third the emissions of
coal, nuclear energy
facilities generate no
emissions. We need to
keep nuclear power in
our energy mix if we’re
serious about reducing
carbon
emissions
and protecting the
environment. Our target should be for nuclear
energy to account for 25 percent of our
electricity demand.
We’re also developing innovative
ways to maintain individual components.
Earlier this year, for the first time at a
reactor in operation, we implemented
a new maintenance technique on a
facility’s reactor vessel closure head.
This technique, which is known as
cavitation peening, is designed to extend
the life of nuclear reactor primary circuit
components for more than 20 years.
We alsoworkwith our partner, Pooled
Equipment Inventory Company (PEICo),
as part of the Strategic Alliance for FLEX
Emergency Response. Together, we
manage the National SAFER Response
Centers, which store and maintain mobile
operational equipment that can be quickly
deployed to U.S. nuclear facilities when
needed in support of the industry’s
flexible and multi-layered safety strategy.
2.
What role should the renewables
and advanced reactors play in the energy
mix?
I think a lot of our utility customers
are going to start building out their
renewables portfolios, but it’s important
for nuclear energy to be a part of the mix.
Nuclear energy is a reliable, efficient and
round-the-clock source of baseload power.
Completing power uprates on
existing nuclear energy facilities will go a
long way toward meeting baseload need.
Only about half of existing nuclear units
have uprated, meaning the other half of
the fleet is capable of generating more
megawatts. Once utilities have further
built out their renewable portfolios, I
expect we will see a growth in power
uprates.
I also expect that we’ll see a growth
in Generation IV technology. The
U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is
supporting and promoting Generation IV
technology, and offers matching grants.
In fact, Southern Company recently
received one for a sodium reactor.
AREVA is working on a high
temperature gas-cooled reactor, and we’re
also interested in the sodium technology
internationally. One of the benefits of
AREVA Generation IV technology is its
walk-away safety design characteristics.
For instance, with our high temperature
gas-cooled reactor, we use a negative
moderator temperature coefficient, solid
moderator and ceramic in-core heat sink.
The reactor will shut down and passively
cool down if its temperature exceeds
intended operating conditions. I expect
that we’ll see some of these Generation
IV reactors in 2030, along with small
modular reactors (SMRs) being rolled out
around 2025.
We’re supporting NuScale in the
development of its SMR by providing
nuclear fuel design and related services.
We have a lot of confidence in the
NuScale design. SMRs are smaller, more
flexible units and may fit better with a
renewables portfolio. I think there’s a
market for SMRs both internationally and
in the United States.
3.
Provide your vision on HLW and
spent nuclear fuel disposal.
While reinitiating the Yucca
Mountain discussion and establishing
a national repository are an important
part of managing used nuclear fuel in the
