The work to construct the first European Pressurised Water Reactor (EPR) plant in the USA by 2015 is continuing to gain momentum with the start of detailed design engineering work for a proposed fleet of four new reactors.
UniStar Nuclear Energy (UNE) has asked a consortium of Areva and Bechtel Power to begin initial development of the detailed design engineering that will form the basis of the new plants, the first of which will be at Constellation Energy’s Calvert Cliffs nuclear power plant.
Unistar – a joint venture between Constellation Energy and EDF – is also working with US utilities PPL and AmerenUE to develop US EPR units in New York, Pennsylvania, Missouri, Idaho and Texas. It has already submitted a partial COL application for the Calvert Cliffs plant, while Areva submitted the design certification application for the US EPR to the NRC in December 2007.
UniStar has also signed an agreement with Alstom to secure the turbine-generator systems for the first four US EPRs. The company hopes to benefit from construction experience of the first two EPRs in Finland and France.
“The fact that there are two EPRs currently under construction in Finland and France, and EDF is bringing its experience from the Flamanville project to UniStar puts us in a unique position in the marketplace,” said George Vanderheyden, president and chief executive officer of UNE. “Not only do we benefit from design information from the previous two EPRs, we can more precisely lock down costs for a US EPR and provide greater certainty to our partners and customers.”
