Westinghouse to continue nozzle inspections at Swiss plant

Westinghouse has been awarded a long-term contract for reactor pressure vessel nozzle inspections at the Leibstadt nuclear power plant in Switzerland. The company has already been performing such inspections at Leibstadt over the past ten years.

Westinghouse has been awarded a long-term contract for reactor pressure vessel nozzle inspections at the Leibstadt nuclear power plant in Switzerland. The company has already been performing such inspections at Leibstadt over the past ten years.

The single-unit Leibstadt plant (Image: KKL)

In a statement yesterday, Westinghouse said that together with its non-destructive inspection subsidiary WesDyne International it had been awarded a six year contract, with an option for four additional years. The award of the contract by plant operator Kernkraftwerk Leibstadt (KKL) followed an "extensive" public tender process, Westinghouse said.

The contract's scope includes qualification of the plant's mechanized ultrasonic inspection system using "a state-of-the-art phased array technique" and yearly inspections of eight different nozzle types - 56 in total - with each nozzle having up to three welds. A total of 127 welds will be inspected over the project's duration, Westinghouse said.

Leibstadt's mechanical engineering department manager Michael Kessler said, "We are pleased to continue cooperation with Westinghouse to provide Leibstadt with their proven combination of safety-focused inspection techniques and experience-driven duration times that will maximize our plant's availability."

Westinghouse also has a contract to supply fuel for the Leibstadt plant. In December 2013, the company announced that the contract had been extended. As a result, the existing contract (including five reload deliveries in the years 2011-2015) was extended for two additional reload deliveries in 2016 and 2017. Under the terms of the contract, Westinghouse will manufacture the fuel assemblies at its facility in Västerås, Sweden.

Leibstadt features a single BWR built in the early 1980s. The plant produces 1165 MWe for six utilities with various stakes and meets the needs of around 1.1 million people in the north of Switzerland.

Researched and written
by World Nuclear News