Korean companies awarded Barakah service agreements

The Korean companies will provide maintenance services to support routine and outage maintenance activities at the four APR1400 units at Barakah and will also provide supervisory and management experts, as well as leadership "to support the safety and quality-led maintenance" of the plant. KHNP will conduct testing, diagnostics, inspections, maintenance and replacement services, amongst others for both the nuclear and non-nuclear components of the plant.

"The KHNP consortium, supported by KPS, was selected to become a maintenance services partner as a result of its demonstrated capacity to work under the leadership of Nawah to support safe and quality-driven maintenance work at the Barakah plant," Nawah said.

Nawah, as the future holder of the operating licence from the UAE's independent regulator, the Federal Authority for Nuclear Regulation, will hold all regulatory responsibilities for operation and maintenance of the Barakah plant.

Nawah CEO Mark Reddemann said: “Through this agreement, we have created a robust framework of maintenance services providers that combine the best-in-class maintenance expertise in thermal and nuclear plant infrastructure and in the APR1400 technology. The approval of these maintenance agreements stands as a firm commitment to securing the best international partners to ensure safe and quality-led nuclear maintenance at Barakah.”

Jaehoon Chung, President and CEO of KHNP, said: "Now we have opened another chapter for a comprehensive collaboration system."

Nawah has also signed a five-year maintenance service agreement with Doosan Heavy Industries & Construction (DHIC), a subsidiary of the Doosan Group, for the Barakah plant.

"This agreement will be a stepping stone for close cooperation with Nawah to operate the Barakah nuclear energy plant safely and efficiently," said Kiyong Na, CEO of Nuclear Power Plant Business Group of DHIC. "As DHIC has supplied quality nuclear components, such as reactor vessels, steam generator, turbines and generators on time and within budget to Barakah, we will support Nawah with excellent maintenance technology."

Last November, Nawah signed a long-term framework agreement with France's EDF to provide services to support Nawah in the operation and maintenance of Barakah. Under that agreement, EDF will provide Nawah with services in areas including operational safety, radiation protection, fuel cycle management and environmental monitoring. Expertise will be provided through engineering studies, on-site support, training and benchmarking sessions. Services may involve the entire EDF Group including Framatome, as well as some of EDF’s legacy partners, EDF and Nawah said.

Construction of the four Barakah units, in the Al Dhafra Region of Abu Dhabi, began in 2012. Unit 1 was declared complete in 2018, and is expected to begin operations in late 2019 or early 2020. All main concrete works and heavy equipment lifting for the four nuclear reactor units were completed last October. The project is now over 93% complete.

KHNP is a subsidiary of Korea Electric Power Corporation (Kepco), joint venture partner to Enec and prime contractor for the Barakah plant. Enec and Kepco in October 2016 signed a joint venture agreement that made Kepco a minority shareholder in Nawah. In June 2017, KHNP and Nawah agreed to cooperate in the sharing of experience in the operation of Korean-designed APR1400 reactors. South Korea's first APR1400 unit entered commercial operation in December 2015.