Westinghouse-Led Consortium Achieves Milestone in Diversification of Fuel Supply for Russian-Designed Reactors in Europe

May 30, 2017

VÄSTERÅS, Sweden–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Westinghouse
Electric Company and its eight European consortium partners have
achieved a key milestone in the diversification of the nuclear fuel
supply in Europe. The consortium has approved the conceptual fuel design
for the VVER-440 assemblies, which is an enhanced version of a previous
Westinghouse fuel product that was delivered to Loviisa Nuclear Power
Plant in Finland from 2001-2007.

“Through this important initiative, we are fueling Europe’s energy
security by providing fuel to Russian-designed VVER-440 reactors,” said
Aziz Dag, Westinghouse vice president, Northern and Eastern Europe.
“Westinghouse is committed to delivering an innovative VVER-440 design
that offers customers superior safety and quality, as well as security
of supply.”

The next steps include completion of the associated methods and
methodology to be applied for the licensing and use of the new fuel
design in each of the European countries. All key activities are on time
and the program will be completed by October of 2017.

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).