Major module installed at Summer AP1000

Wednesday, 10 December 2014

A large structural component - the CA05 module - has been installed at the VC Summer unit 2, the first of two Westinghouse AP1000s under construction at the site in South Carolina.

The module is put in place within Summer 2's containment building (Image: SCE&G)

The CA05 module, weighing some 82 tonnes, was successfully lowered into place in the centre of the unit's reactor building on 6 December, South Carolina Electric and Gas (SCE&G) announced.

The module forms part of the chemical and volume control system tunnel and passive core cooling system walls within the reactor's containment vessel. It consists of reinforced steel plates that will be filled with concrete to provide structural support for the containment building, and the walls will separate multiple rooms in the containment building.

SCE&G said, "This is one of several milestones achieved this year in the construction of nuclear reactors that are among the first in the US in 30 years."

A Westinghouse/CB&I consortium is building two 1117 MWe AP1000 reactors at the Summer site. The consortium informed SCE&G earlier this year that the project faces delay of at least one year for each unit. The "substantial completion" of unit 2 is now expected in late 2018 or the first half of 2019, while that of unit 3 may be about 12 months later. The delay was attributed to the fabrication and delivery of structural modules from CB&I's facility in Lake Charles, Louisiana.

Westinghouse/CB&I are also building two AP1000 units at the Vogtle nuclear power plant for Georgia Power Co, a subsidiary of Southern Company. The CA05 module for the first of those units, Vogtle 3, was installed in late October. Unit 3 is expected to start operation in late 2017, with unit 4 following a year later.

Four AP1000 units are also under construction in China: two at Sanmen in Zhejiang province and two more at Haiyang in Shandong province. Sanmen unit 1 is expected to be the first AP1000 to begin operating. All four Chinese AP1000s are scheduled to be in operation by 2016.

Researched and written
by World Nuclear News