PORTLAND, Ore.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--NuScale Power announced today that it has successfully installed a full-length helical coil steam generator (HCSG) at the SIET S.p.A (SIET) facilities in Piacenza, Italy. The NuScale design includes a first-of-a-kind HCSG for conversion of nuclear heat into process steam.
Testing of the full-length HCSG will be conducted at prototypic fluid temperatures, pressures and flow rates to measure the steam generator’s thermal performance. The data will be used to validate NuScale’s state-of-the-art computer codes and help NuScale vendors optimize the performance of their steam turbines for a NuScale application. Flow induced vibration testing will also be performed as part of the assessment. These tests provide important input to the NuScale Design Certification Application planned for NRC submittal in the second half of 2016 and for the first planned Combined Operating License Application for the Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems Carbon Free Power Project. The UAMPS COLA is planned for submittal in 2017 with the project commercially operational in late 2023.
NuScale contracted the services of SIET for the full-scale testing of the HCSG performance over the expected range of reactor operating conditions. SIET has extensive experience with similar heat exchanger test bundle fabrication and testing for other reactor vendors.
"The fabrication, installation and subsequent testing of this full-length HCSG is an important step in the continued support of our reactor safety code development and validation, our reactor design, and our technology maturation to reduce first-of-a-kind risk,” stated Dr. Jose Reyes, NuScale’s Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer. “This is another key milestone for the development of our innovative technology.”
NuScale’s full-length HCSG was constructed in a fabrication shop near the SIET facility and then transported by truck to the SIET facility where it was installed by crane.
About NuScale Power, LLC
NuScale Power, LLC is developing a new kind of nuclear plant; a safer, smaller, scalable version of pressurized water reactor technology, designed with natural safety features. Fluor Corporation (NYSE: FLR), a global engineering, procurement and construction company with a 60-year history in commercial nuclear power, is the majority investor in NuScale. As the sole winner of the second round of the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) competitively-bid, cost-sharing program to develop nuclear small modular reactor (SMR) technology, NuScale's design offers the benefits of carbon-free nuclear power but takes away the issues presented by the cost of installing large capacity. A nuclear power plant using NuScale's technology is comprised of individual NuScale Power Modules™, each producing 50 megawatts of electricity (gross) with its own factory-built combined containment vessel and reactor vessel, and its own packaged turbine-generator set. A power plant can include as many as 12 NuScale Power Modules to produce as much as 600 MWe, gross (570 net, nominal, after house loads). The reactor coolant is driven by natural circulation and can shut down safely with no operator action, no AC or DC power, and no external water. NuScale power plants are scalable - additional modules are added as customer demand for electricity increases. NuScale's technology also is ideally suited to supply energy for district heating, desalination and other applications. NuScale is headquartered in Portland, Oregon and has offices in Corvallis, OR; Rockville, MD; Atlanta, GA; Charlotte, NC; and Chattanooga, TN. For more information visit: www.nuscalepower.com.
