Nuclear Plant Journal, September-October 2015 NuclearPlantJournal.com
11
Utility,
Industry &
Corporation
Utility
Quad Cities & Byron
Exelon Corporation
announced
that all of its nuclear plants in the PJM
market cleared in the transition capacity
auction for the 2017-18 planning year and
that the company will defer any decisions
about the future operations of its Quad
Cities and Byron nuclear plants for one
year. As a result, the company plans to
continue operating its Quad Cities nuclear
power plant through at least May 2018.
The Byron plant is already obligated to
operate through May 2019.
Exelon intends to bid Quad Cities,
Byron, Three Mile Island and all eligible
nuclear plants into the 2019-2020 PJM
capacity auction next year. The decision
to defer retirement decisions comes after
rigorous analysis of the present and future
economics of the plants, taking into
consideration the constructive market
trends stemming from the PJM capacity
auction reforms.
Contact: Paul Elsberg Exelon
Corporation, telephone: (312) 394-7417
Refueling Outage
Operators at Peach Bottom Atomic
Power Station removed Unit 3 from
service on September 21, 2015 for a
planned refueling and maintenance
outage.
The purpose of the outage is to
refuel the reactor and make equipment
modifications that will ensure safe and
reliable operations for another two years
of continuous operations. Peach Bottom
Unit 2 will continue to generate electricity
during the outage.
Since 2010,
Exelon
has beenworking
with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission
(NRC) to complete a comprehensive
design review and perform a host of
EPU equipment upgrades, including the
replacement of high and low-pressure
turbines, steam dryers and main power
transformers on both units. The Unit 2
and Unit 3 generators were overhauled
and feed water pumps and motors were
also upgraded.
Contact: Krista Merkel, Exelon,
telephone: (717) 456-4818.
New Brand
TEPCO
plans to transition to a
holding company system through a
company split on April 1, 2016. They
have finalized the new brand for the
Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO)
Group together with the company logo of
"TEPCO Holdings, Incorporated," which
will become the holding company of
TEPCO after the transition, with names
and logos of each company.
Deregulation of the electricity retail
market is scheduled for April 2016 and
legal separation of the electricity power
transmission and distribution sector is
scheduled for 2020. The Japanese electric
power market is undergoing a major
change.
The three company names are:
"TEPCO Fuel & Power, Incorporated"
for the fuel and thermal power
generation business, "TEPCO Power
Grid, Incorporated" for the general
power transmission and distribution
business, and "TEPCO Energy Partner,
Incorporated" for the electricity retail
business.
Contact: TEPCO, website: www4.
tepco.co.jp/en/index-e.html
Industry
Cooperation Agreement
Korea Atomic Energy Research
Institute
(KAERI) signed a cooperation
agreement in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
on September 2, 2015, with the King
Abdullah City for Atomic & Renewable
Energy (K.A.CARE) for building
SMART reactors and developing human
resources capability to run them.
The signing ceremony was held at the
K.A.CARE headquarters in the presence
of KAERI President Dr. Jong Kyung
Kim, K.A.CARE President Dr. Hashim
Yamani, and representatives and leading
nuclear experts from both countries,
including Mr. Jin Soo Kim, Ambassador
of the Republic of Korea to Saudi Arabia,
Mr. Hai Joo Moon, Director General of
the Ministry of Science, ICT (information
and communications technology), and
Future Planning of the Republic of Korea.
Dr. J. K. Kim and Dr. Waleed Abul
Faraj, deputy president of K.A.CARE
signed several contracts, which aim
at building partnership to establish
knowledge infrastructure in SMART
technology fields, such as designing and
building reactors and maintaining their
mechanical and safety features.
These contracts aim at achieving
actual partnership to establish an
infrastructure knowledge in the scopes of
the techniques of small Korean compact
reactor SMART.
Under the deal, the two countries will
conduct a three-year preliminary study
to review the feasibility of constructing
SMART reactors in Saudi Arabia. The
MOU also calls for the two countries to
cooperate on the commercialization and
promotion of the SMART reactor to other
countries.
Contact: KAERI, website: http://
/
Corporation
Inspection Tools
Three of
AREVA Inc.’s
automated
inspection tools for examining nuclear
steam generators were recently qualified
by the U.S. Electric Power Research
Institute (EPRI). These tools are designed
to mimic human data analysis, but with
greater reliability and consistency.
Having received EPRI’s Automated
Analysis Performance Demonstration
Database
(AAPDD)
qualification,
AIDA
3
™, MIRA
3
™ and WTT are now
available to the U.S. nuclear energy
market.
Merging traditional and non-
traditional detection techniques, and a
simplified combination of neural network
and datamining,AIDA
3
, MIRA
3
andWTT
provide human analysis competence at
accelerated computer speeds. Together,
this provides repeatability and reliability
in nuclear steam generator eddy current
non-destructive
examination.
Fully
automated analysis of bobbin, array and
rotating probe data eliminates human
performance error and subjectivity.
Contact: Curtis Roberts, AREVA,
Inc., telephone; (202) 374-8766, email:
.
Testing System
AREVA
has launched at its Creusot
site in France a new testing system that
reproduces on a smaller scale all the
