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NuclearPlantJournal.com Nuclear Plant Journal, July-August 2016
8.
Provide an overview of global
interest in deployment of the PRISM.
I believe long term that PRISM is an
ideal solution in the US and other places
to consume used fuel. I think what we
need is the right policy that says we need
a solution today to go deal with our used
fuel issues. That really is the key. And
then, the right investors to say we’re going
to go and bring the PRISM technology to
the market. We’ve got a proven design
that’s ready to develop. We just need the
right policy, the right drivers in the US or
elsewhere to go make it happen.
9.
What is PRISM’s evolution background?
It’s based on 30 years of operating
experience at EBR-II at Idaho National
Laboratory. It’s a sodium cooled,
advanced reactor technology, that uses
metal fuel. We’ve taken the EBR-II
technology and have commercialized
it, adding additional enhancements and
safety features. We are ready to begin
licensing and deployment.
10.
Concluding remarks.
Part of our strategy going forward
is to look for areas, these adjacencies,
where we have strong core competency.
We’re expanding in the PWR space, both
in services and in fuels.
In services, we started with the
Ginna plant. This was an outstanding
partnership with Exelon. They helped
us learn and understand the PWR refuel
floor. There are a lot of similarities
between BWR and PWR outages, but
we needed that partner for the first one.
It was a tremendous success. There
were no safety or human performance
issues and we finished 26 hours ahead of
schedule. It was a record outage. In fact,
in the 45-year history of the Ginna plant,
it was the best outage ever. We plan to
leverage the expertise that we gained
there in partnership with Exelon and do
more PWR outages.
The other area we just announced that
we’re entering is the PWR fuel market
with TVEL. They will bring the TVS-K
Russian fuel design and we will bring
the licensing and the quality know how
in the US, and together we’re going to
license this technology in the US. We’re
finding a target plant to install lead use
assemblies, LUAs, and ultimately, once
we’re successful, the plan is to build these
PWR fuel assemblies in our Wilmington
manufacturing facility. This will allow
and provide greater choices for utilities in
the US, another choice on PWR fuel.
Going forward we are talking with
other utilities on the next potential
PWR outages. We absolutely plan to
leverage the knowhow that we gained
and the successes we had at Ginna and
broaden that to other PWR outages. So,
those are two adjacencies that we’re now
expanding into.
Our portfolio of new units starts
with the most proven, ABWR. First of
all, our boiling water reactors, the ABWR
and the ESBWR, are the two safest Gen
III and Gen III+ designs. ABWR has 25
years of operating experience and is the
safest Gen III reactor. ESBWR, our most
recent design, is the safest Gen III+. For
example, in a catastrophic event, such as
loss of offsite power, the reactor can cool
itself for more than seven days without any
operator interaction. We’ve gotten great
response on both of these technologies.
Customers like the simplicity, and again,
from a safety perspective, they are the two
safest designs. Also, we’re very excited
long term about our Gen IV advanced
reactor, PRISM, which is based on the 30
years of operating experience on EBR-II.
Contact: Jonathan Allen, GE Hitachi
Nuclear Energy, telephone: (910) 819-2581,
email:
.
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