Page 11 - Nuclear Plant Journal September October 2012
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Nuclear Plant Journal, September-October 2012
11
steering committee led byChief Operating
Officers of both groups.
Contact: Patricia Marie, telephone:
Fuel Technology Center
The Babcock & Wilcox Company
(B&W) joined by Representative Bob
Goodlatte (VA-6) and Bob Sledd, Senior
Economic Advisor to the Governor of
Virginia, participated in a ribbon-cutting
ceremony at the new B&W mPower™
Fuel Technology Center (FTC) in
Lynchburg, Virginia. The advanced
manufacturing technologies B&W will
use to produce nuclear fuel for its B&W
mPower small modular reactor (SMR)
will be developed and qualified at the
FTC. Longer term, the technologies
developed at the FTC provides B&W the
ability to support the manufacture of fuel
for other reactors.
This newly dedicated facility
marks the third major infrastructure
development project in Virginia related
to the B&W mPower reactor, including
the establishment of a dedicated design
office in 2010 and an Integrated System
Test facility in 2011.
Contact: Jud Simmons, telephone:
Uranium Project
Cameco
has reached an agreement
with BHP Billiton to acquire the Yeelirrie
uranium project in Western Australia for
$430 million (US). Yeelirrie is a near-
surface calcrete-style deposit, amenable
to open pit mining techniques.
Yeelirrie is one of Australia’s largest
undeveloped uranium deposits and is
located about 650 kilometres northeast of
Perth and about 750 kilometres south of
Cameco’s Kintyre exploration project.
“Yeelirrie represents an attractive
deposit that fits well with Cameco’s
vision and corporate strategy,” said
Cameco’s president and CEO Tim Gitzel.
“We are pleased to add this promising
deposit to our suite of uranium assets and
look forward to advancing this property
through our process for assessing
development projects.”
Cameco expects the transaction
to close by the end of 2012, subject to
approvals from the government ofWestern
Australia and the Australian Foreign
Investment Review Board. Upon closing,
stamp tax duty of about $22 million will
be payable by Cameco to the government
of Western Australia.
Contact: Donna Cole, telephone:
011 61 419 901229.
Recycled Uranium
Candu Energy Inc
. has signed an
expanded agreement with China National
Nuclear
Corporation’s
subsidiary
companies, Third Qinshan Nuclear
Power Company (TQNPC), China North
Nuclear Fuel Corporation (CNNFC)
and Nuclear Power Institute of China
(NPIC) to continue co-operation in the
development of recycled uranium and
thorium as alternative fuels for new
CANDU
®
reactors.
With 24-month duration, the
agreement is expected to result inadetailed
conceptual design of the Advanced Fuel
CANDU Reactor (AFCR). The AFCR
is a further evolution of the successful
CANDU 6
®
and Generation III Enhanced
CANDU 6
®
, which is optimized for use
of recycled uranium and thorium fuel.
The agreement follows the successful
irradiation demonstration of recycled
uranium fuel bundles in operating
CANDU reactors at the Qinshan site,
about 150 km southwest of Shanghai.
The tests demonstrated the feasibility of
using natural uranium equivalent (NUE)
fuel, composed of recycled uranium and
depleted uranium in CANDU reactors.
The parties are now working on a project
to convert the Qinshan CANDU reactor
units to full core use of NUE fuel by
2014.
The agreement marks the third phase
of cooperationbetweenCanadaandChina.
Beginning in 2008, it demonstrates not
only the use of recovered uranium but also
thorium in CANDU reactors and serves
as evidence of Candu’s commitment to
customer driven partnerships and the
CANDU reactor’s inherent capability
to use alternative fuels. This CANDU
flexibility offers a unique opportunity to
realize closed fuels cycles in countries that
have both CANDU and LWR reactors.
Contact: Katherine Ward, telephone:
(905) 403-7349.
NAECP Board
Day & Zimmermann
, a provider
of industrial, defense and workforce
solutions
for
government
and
commercial customers, announced that
Kristopher Cravey, Vice President of
D&Z ECM (Engineering, Construction
and Maintenance) Business Services &
Corporate Safety, has been elected to
the Board of Directors of The National
Association of Employee Concerns
Professionals (NAECP). Cravey isa leader
in the nuclear industry delivering best
practices in Safety, Training, Continuous
Improvement,
and
Organizational
Development for more than a decade. He
serves on the INPO Supplier Participant
Advisory Committee and on the Board of
Directors for the Construction Industry
Institute. Cravey holds an MBA and
MA from Regent University in Virginia
and is a PhD candidate in Organizational
Leadership.
Contact: Steve Wanczyk, Braithwaite
Communications, telephone: (215) 564-
Decommissioning
Services
Studsvik
and Westinghouse have
signed a teaming agreement to jointly
offer a full range of decommissioning
services for nuclear power plants in
Europe, initially in Germany and Sweden.
The cooperation will be marketed under
the separate brand name of NDCON,
Nuclear Decommissioning Consortium
by Studsvik and Westinghouse.
The first commercial nuclear power
plants in Europe were commissioned 50
years ago and many of these units are now
approaching their designed operating life.
Additionally, in some instances, political
decisions have shortened the expected
operation of nuclear power plants. In the
case of Germany, it has been decided to
phase out its 17 nuclear reactors by 2022.
Eight of those reactors were immediately
shut down in March 2011. For these
reasons, a significant number of nuclear
power plants across Europe will need to
be decommissioned and dismantled in the
next 15 to 20 years.
Contact: Anders Jackson, telephone:
46 155 22 10 82.
