Exciting Times for the Nuclear Industry
Sep 07 - Nuclear Plant Journal
1. What is the difference between AECL and AECL Technologies organizationally?
2. How do you justify the use of nuclear energy economically?
We need to have new base load power in the United States. With the over
reliance on gas-fired power plants over the last several years and the rising
cost of gas, we need to relook at nuclear power as a means of achieving price
stability going forward. It is important for our economy. Nuclear provides
environmental advantages and cost competitiveness and it also meets President
Bush's Clear Skies initiative. For last 10 years we have been building a lot of
combined cycle gas fueled plants. Diversity of fuel mix is also very important.
New nuclear plants are competitive with gas at the $3.25 per million BTU price.
Gas is currently selling at $6.40 per million BTU.
In China, one out of every five days, people are without power for some part
of the day. Their economy is growing at the rate of 8% to 9% annually. Their
generation cannot keep up with the demand for energy. Nuclear energy will enable
China to produce the needed energy with environmentally friendly technology.
3. What is AECL's involvement in current nuclear power consortiums?
We have a very good design, which is evolutionary from CANDU-6. We have taken
the best of light water reactors and the best of CANDU 6 and combined them
together. We completed two units in China, one in July 2003 and the other one in
December 2002, both, ahead of schedule and on budget. AECL's last six plants
were built ahead of schedule and on budget. Our price is competitive with
alternative sources of energy. There is room for all reactor technologies.
We feel fortunate that Dominion did an evaluation of technologies and they
selected AECL's ACR-700 design for consideration at their North Anna site. It is
my impression that Dominion liked AECL's commitment to nuclear power for the
long-term and our commitment to building a new nuclear plant on a firm price and
fixed schedule. They liked our on-line refueling, which gives them operational
flexibility. It is an exciting time for AECL Technologies as well as the nuclear
power industry.
AECL is part of the Dominion consortium along with Bechtel and Hitachi. A
second consortium led by TVA is looking at the Toshiba- ABWR design for
potential deployment at their Bellefonte plant site. And, a third consortium
with a group of utilities is looking at an AP1000 and the ESBWR, but has not
selected a site.
4. What is the difference between light water reactor technology as compared
to the ACR-700 technology?
I consider the ACR-700 a light water reactor since it uses light water for
cooling. We do have heavy water, but it is used as a moderator only. The ACR-700
is different from previous CANDUs in this regard, having 75% less heavy water
than the CANDU-6's. The ACR- 700, like all previous CANDU designs, does have
online fueling. Current light water reactors shut down on an 18-month or 24month
cycle for refueling, whereas, in ACR- 700 technology we do not have to do that.
We are looking at a three-year operational cycle with a 21-day maintenance
outage. In light water technology, fuel leakers require shutting down the plant
and replacing the fuel; whereas in ACR-700 Technology, with our on line fueling
capability, we can replace the fuel at power and without shutting the plant down
and keep operating.
The other difference is that the ACR700 does not have boron in the reactor
coolant system, which ensures long-term plant life. We have reactor pressure
tubes, which are of horizontal configuration as compared to the vertical reactor
vessels in the light-water technology. CANDU6's have been very reliable. They
have an excellent safety record. Their lifetime capacity factor is 87.3 percent
worldwide.
With the Wolsong units, the Koreans have done a tremendous job. They have
operated their CANDU-6 units as well, if not better than the light-water reactor
plants.
The current world record for continuous operation of a nuclear power plant is
Pickering 7, which operated for 984 days before shutting down for maintenance.
Again, we do not have refueling outages. Online maintenance is very much a part
of CANDU-6 operation and will be so for the ACR-700. We have found that 65 to
75% of the forced outage items are related to the balance of plant (BOP) - not
the nuclear steam plant. We have Bechtel and Hitachi working with us on the BOP.
We are challenging them to understand those BOP issues and either put the
necessary redundancies or include the needed engineered equipment so that we may
have the required BOP reliability that we need.
We are looking at the entire ACR700 plant to insure standardization of pipe
sizes, valves, hangers, supports, and other equipment across all systems of the
plant. This helps us to reduce construction cost and enable us to improve
maintenance efforts and minimize spare parts requirements.
5. Are there material corrosion issues with ACR-700?
We have had some FAC (Fluid Assisted Corrosion) problems. The affected
material was carbon steel in the feeder area, which has now been replaced with
stainless steel. We are looking at problems in the nuclear steam supply systems
side as well as the BOP and resolving concerns plant-wide to avoid future
problems.
The capacity factors 20 years back were 60 to 70%; whereas, our capacity
factors starting point today is 95%.
6. What are the characteristics of ACR700 fuel design?
It is of the same basic design that has been used in CANDU units world-wide.
The only difference is that it is slightly enriched - to 2.1% whereas all
previous units used natural uranium. We share the industry's concern with
getting Yucca Mountain licensed and built and envision spent ACR-700 fuel would
eventually be stored there.
7. How is Canada handling its spent fuel disposal?
Currently, Canadian utilities store spent fuel on site, initially in their
spent fuel storage pools and after a period of time, transfer it to dry storage
in Macstor, an AECL design, on-site storage. AECL does have deep repository
experience as a result of their running the Whiteshell Laboratory outside of
Winnipeg. As a result of this experience with a Canadian deep repository, AECLT
has people working with DOE on the Yucca Mountain Project.
8. What is the current overnight capital construction cost ofACR- 700?
We are projecting the cost to be $ 1,000 (U.S.) per kilowatt installed for
the 5th unit (the first unit of the third twin). The cost for the first unit
will be $1,255 (U.S.) per kilowatt installed. The second twin units will be in
the range of $1,100 (U.S.) per kilowatt. The first plant will take 44 months for
construction and the 5th unit will require only 36 months construction time
period. AECL has designed the ACR-700 for modular construction based on the
success we had on Qinshan in China. We currently have over 200 modules which we
envision will be built at various locations in the U.S., which will reduce our
onsite workforce considerably as compared to the ''stick building" approach
of building everything on site as was done for the existing operating nuclear
power plants in the U.S.
9. What is the current operating cost of ACR-700?
While our staffing (human resources) cost is a little bit higher, because we
have two units, it is offset by our fuel cost being 10- 15% less than that for
other light-water reactors. We are projecting our O&M costs to be 1.1 cents
to 1.2 cents per megawatt hour; however, this cost is dependent on the operation
and maintenance philosophy of the operating utility.
10. What are the qualifications of ACR700 to attract investment?
We have a powerful story in this regard. We have AECL, which is a Canadian
crown corporation; we have Bechtel, the world's largest family-owned
architect-engineer constructor, and then we have Hitachi, which is a $64 billion
a year company, of which $8 billion is in the United States along with 15,000
employees in the U.S.
We have a proven track record of completing our last six units on or ahead t
of schedule and on budget. Therefore, when we go to Wall Street they listen to
us as we have a very credible story.
11. What are the prospects of building additional ACR-700 nuclear power
plants in China?
We have not built an ACR-700 in China. The Qinshan units are CANDU6's. We
believe that if we are successful in building ACR- 700's in the U.S. and Canada-
on time and on budget, we hope to have good prospects of building ACR700's in
China. Also, in that China does not have a lot of natural uranium, we are
exploring the potential of an ACR-700 using thorium in China. China has a good
abundance of thorium.
12. Is the United Kingdom considering the ACR-700?
Currently the U.K. is planning to go with gas and renewables to meet their
future energy needs. They are, however reviewing their strategy in view of
Finland ordering a nuclear power plant. 35% of the UK's power comes from outside
United Kingdom; therefore they are rethinking their strategy to start building
nuclear power plants. However, we are hopeful that they will consider the ACR700
along with the AP 1000 by BNFL/Westinghouse, should they decide to build new
nuclear power plants.
13. Concluding remarks
The demand for gas today is such that we do not see its prices coming down;
therefore, if the U.S. and Canada keepusing gas-fueled power, it will be
difficult to compete in the global markets due to our high-energy prices.
The ACR-700 also lends itself well to water desalination plants. We are part
of the project with Texas A&M University, Texas Institute for the
Advancement of Chemical Technologies, which is performing a study on the
potential deployment of new nuclear power plants on the Texas Gulf Coast. We
would like for that new plant to be an ACR-700.
We need new nuclear power plants not only for environmental reasons, but for
price stability and national security and national energy security viewpoints.
We need diversification of our resources.
Contact: Simon Leung, AECL Technologies, 2251 Speakman Dr., Mississauga L5K
1B2, Ontario, Canada; Phone: (905) 823-9060, ext. 2010, Fax: (905) 823-1290,
E-mail: leungs@aecl.ca
By John Polcyn, AECL Technologies.
John Polcyn
John Polcyn was appointed President of AECL Technologies in June, 2003. Prior
to joining AECL Technologies Mr. Polcyn held a variety of senior positions with
Bechtel Power Corporation as Vice President responsible for global nuclear
marketing and business development and with the Tennessee Valley Authority. Mr.
Polcyn is a member of the American Nuclear Society, chairman of the Institute of
Nuclear Power Operations (INPO) Supplier Participant Advisory Committee and a
member of the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) New Nuclear Plant Task Force.
This excerpt is from an interview of John Polcyn, President of AECL
Technologies, conducted by Newal K. Agnihotri, Editor and Sr. Publisher, Nuclear
Plant Journal at NEI's Nuclear Energy Assembly in New Orleans, Louisiana on May
14, 2004.
Copyright EQES, Inc. Jul/Aug 2004