Westinghouse-Led Consortium Prepared to Supply Fuel to VVER-440 Reactors in Europe

VÄSTERÅS, Sweden–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Westinghouse Electric Company and its eight European consortium partners
today announced the successful completion of an EU funded project
targeted at diversifying the nuclear fuel supply to VVER-440 reactors in
Europe.

The consortium has developed a conceptual fuel design and determined how
the manufacturing and supply chain can be reestablished to build and
ship VVER-440 fuel assemblies, similar to what was done by Westinghouse
and ENUSA for the Loviisa Nuclear Power Plant in Finland in 2001-2007.
In addition to the fuel design, the consortium has set up and verified
the associated methods and methodology to be applied for the licensing
and use of a new fuel design.

“This project has prepared us very well for manufacturing and delivery
of VVER-440 fuel to European utilities, and thereby created a viable
alternative to today´s single source of fuel supply,” said Aziz Dag,
Westinghouse vice president and managing director, Northern Europe.
“Many of the countries in Eastern Europe rely heavily on nuclear energy,
and strengthening their energy security is therefore strategically very
important.”

Westinghouse has been leading the project known as European Supply of
Safe Nuclear Fuel (ESSANUF) since September 2015. Its partners include
VUJE, ÚJV Řež, Lappeenranta University of Technology (LUT), National
Nuclear Laboratory (NNL), NucleoCon, National Science Center Kharkov
Institute of Physics and Technology (NSC KIPT), the Joint Research
Centre of the European Commission in Karlsruhe (JRC-Karlsruhe) and ENUSA
Industrias Avanzadas (ENUSA). The program is funded by the European
Union’s (EU’s) Euratom Research and Training Programme (2014-2018) which
forms part of Horizon 2020 (H2020), the EU’s Research and Innovation
program (Grant Agreement 671546).

Contacts

Westinghouse Electric Company
Sarah Cassella, 412-374- 4744
Manager,
External Communications
[email protected]