This June brings one disappointment after another for US Westinghouse looking for a place in the fuel Sun of the Eastern Europe. The Czech utility CEZ decided to cancel ahead of schedule the contract with Westinghouse for nuclear fuel delivery to the Temelin NPP. Soon the fuel supply for the Czech VVER-1000 will be provided by the Russians. The proper agreement was signed during the visit of acting TVEL president Yuriy Olenin in Prague at the beginning of June.

However the Westinghouse does not like to accept itself as a looser because the Americans keep the last beachhead in the region. The Ukrainian deputy minister for fuel and power Yuriy Nedashkovskiy claims that there is no any problem with operation of US-made fuel assemblies in the South-Ukrainian NPP. His optimism is shared by Mike Kirst, director of central and eastern Europe for Westinghouse's nuclear fuel business, who said he expects for more deals with Ukraine when Russian fuel contracts expire in 2011.

First appearance of Westinghouse in the Ukrainian nuclear market is dated by the mid-90^th and linked to the well-known technical troubles of then-Russian nuclear companies. Thereupon the US experts prognosticated the easy victory for Westinghouse and consider as the main obstacle stable private connections between the Russian and Ukrainian nuclear engineers and the financial preference of Russian deals for Kyiv. [1]

However Russia refused to stand still. In 1997, the scientific direction of the TVEL corporation was founded. Its mission was to develop, manufacture and introduce on the nuclear power plants with VVER reactor the next generation fuel assembly competitive with the best Western assemblies at the earliest possible date. The Russian designers used the frames from the Zirconium-based alloys provided the requested toughness for whole life cycle and prepared to use the integrated burnable absorbers.

The special stress during designing of new fuel assembly - first of all, TVSA from OKBM company - was laid to the possibility to increase the burn-up, improve the reliability and bending rigidity of assembly. The advance design permits now to prolong the assembly life time in the reactor core up to 4-5 years and makes possible to work in the flexing generating mode (daily changing of unit's power). [2]

The Russian extra trump card could be also the competition between two assembly manufacturers, namely, OKB Gidropress (Podolsk) and OKBM (Nizhny Novgorod). This will give to foreign customers one more degree of freedom. Till 2003, the commercial operations of Podolsk's TVS-2 assemblies is arranged in Balakovo NPP; the test running of TVS-2M assemblies is started in the same plant. Up to the moment, just one assembly had cladding failure from the total number of 652. [3]

Comparing to the Russian forward movement, the Westinghouse's successes are really frugal. All the data concerning the results of the TVS-W assembly operation in Temelin NPP are considered as the confidential ones due to the "business secrets". However, the environmentalist groups such as the "South-Bohemian Mothers" and some Austrian organizations found the data about the plant's problem and distribute it to the mass-media. In June 2006, Radko Pavlovec, Upper Austria's Commissioner for Nuclear Issues, said angrily - the situation with the nuclear fuel at Temelin is so serious that the further operation of the plant would be very irresponsible decision. [4]

The most annoying feature of the US-made VVER-1000 fuel assemblies is its inability to provide the reliable insertion of the control rods into the reactor core. In May 2006, one of Temelin units tested the control rod insertion and found that 51 out of 61 failed. Even more, the Westinghouse did not succeeded in keeping the integrity of cladding materials. As a result, a lot of leaks occurred during operation and the plant owners become to be in conflict with the fuel manufacturers. Finally, in November 2006 the plant director Vladimir Hlavinka told that three (!) partial refueling would be considered for both Temelin units in 2007 and each of them would last 50-70 days. [5]

The Ukrainian expansion of Westinghouse is also realized with big delays. The date of fuel supply to the South-Ukrainian NPP's third unit - the only reactor in the country where the US-made fuel assemblies are loaded - are often postponed and the quality of American fuel gives raise to unfavorable criticism. In October 2005, the first vice-president of NAEK Energoatom company Yuriy Kovrizhkin had to said: "The US-made fuel assemblies do not correspond to the quality of the Russian TVEL corporation production. During two weeks we demanded the explanations from the Westinghouse and worked for improving of those six assemblies, which had been delivered to us by Americans." [6]

Though the experience with first six TVS-W assembly operation in the South-Ukrainian NPP, loaded in 2005, is accepted as the satisfactory, both countries refuse to open the details of the qualification program. Still it is unknown where the assemblies being tested were installed in the reactor core - based on the unofficial conversations, these assemblies have been inserted at the peripheral region of the reactor core where the conditions are the most favorable for the operation.

The best independent confirmation of the fact that Russian nuclear companies recover the leadership in the field of the fuel production for the VVER reactor is the results of the international bids for fuel supply to Temelin NPP and Loviisa NPP. Both of them finished in 2006 by the victory of Russian TVEL corporation. In the case of Czech plant, as we said above, the loading of Russian fuel would start ahead of schedule.

Director of central and eastern Europe for Westinghouse's nuclear fuel business Mike Kirst refuses to accept the technical lag of American engineers. Talking about the reasons of its company defeat in last year bids, he repeats the 90^th claims of US political and business experts. He says that the main reasons were the cheap price of Russian fuel as well as the affiliation of CEZ utility to the Czech government. "In this region, price is going to be our toughest test. The Russians are very aggressive in wanting to keep their market share and theyhave a lot more potential for price flexibility than we do," he said. [7]

Kirst and his colleagues prefer now to talk about the political importance of the Westinghouse and Ukraine collaboration. "The nuclear sector accounts for 50 percent of their power needs, fargreater than natural gas. So the reverberations for their economy - if they do not have acompetitive second source of energy - could be much more dramatic. The U.S. government and Ukrainian government have recognized that, which is why we're in this process." In other words, he says that the Westinghouse nuclear fuel will help to Ukraine to escape the energy-dependency from Moscow.

However, even in the political field the Westinghouse positions are not blameless. The United States forbid the spent nuclear fuel return to this country; therefore, Ukraine has to think how to store the US-origin spent fuel if the cooperation with the Westinghouse would be expanded. It would be also very difficult for Ukraine to reprocess this spent fuel because she must the humiliating procedure of getting approval from the USA. As the Indian current example shows, such approvals are often linked to many political limitations established by Washington.

References

SOURCE: AtomInfo.Ru

DATE: June 30, 2007

Topics: NFC, East Europe, Ukraine, TVEL, Westinghouse