Philippsburg 1 reactor segmentation contract

Tuesday, 8 September 2015

A consortium led by Westinghouse has been awarded a contract for dismantling the reactor pressure vessel and internals of unit 1 at the Philippsburg nuclear power plant in Germany. The unit shut down in 2011.

The two-unit Philippsburg plant (Image: EnBW)

The contract - awarded by Energie Baden-Württemberg (EnBW) subsidiary EnBW Kernkraft GmbH (EnKK) - covers the planning, equipment manufacture and on-site segmentation of the reactor vessel internals and the reactor vessel, including peripheral structures.

The scope for this contract will be carried out by a consortium comprising Nukem Technologies and GNS (Gesellschaft für Nuklear-Service) under the lead of Westinghouse.

The work will be carried out under the direction of EnKK once the decommissioning licence is granted by the Ministry of the Environment, Climate and Energy of Baden-Württemberg. The company applied for the "final and permanent" decommissioning of Philippsburg 1 and for the initial demolition permit in May 2013.

EnBW expects the decommissioning and dismantling phase at the 890 MWe boiling water reactor to take about 15 to 20 years.

Westinghouse vice president and managing director for Central Europe Norbert Haspel said, "We are very pleased to be awarded this contract. Because of our strong teamwork, we have developed a customer-oriented and optimized solution leveraging the strength of each of the partners. With this project we are able to sustain our fruitful cooperation with EnBW through the deployment of safe, proven Westinghouse technology to their decommissioning activities."

EnBW's Philippsburg 1 was among the older reactor units that Chancellor Angela Merkel forced to close early in the week of the Fukushima accident in March 2011. Built in 1976, its operation had been set to continue until 2017. Merkel's move, however, brought its power generation career to an abrupt end. The newer Philippsburg 2 unit continues to operate but is scheduled to shut down in 2019.

Researched and written
by World Nuclear News