Westinghouse And Bechtel Together For The First NPP In Poland

Westinghouse Electric Company (ENS Corporate Member) and Bechtel will jointly form a consortium to design and build Poland’s first commercial nuclear power plant. On 25 May, the two companies signed an agreement in Warsaw with the Polish utility Polskie Elektrownie Jądrowe to define the terms of cooperation.

The agreement defines responsibilities and key rules and conditions to be followed by the partners. It specifies that Westinghouse and Bechtel will work together in areas such as designing the NPP, implementing schedules, project control and quality control.

The leader of the consortium at the design stage of the power plant will be Westinghouse and during construction Bechtel.

The AP1000 is a Generation III+ reactor with fully passive safety systems, modular construction design, and a very small footprint per MWe. In the United States at the Vogtle site, one AP1000 unit recently began producing power for the grid while a second unit prepares for initial fuel load.

Four AP1000 reactors are currently setting operational performance and availability records in China with six additional reactors under construction. Westinghouse AP1000 technology also has been selected for nine units in Ukraine and is under consideration at multiple other sites in Central and Eastern Europe, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Read more on NucNet.

Under the 2020 nuclear programme, Poland has ambitious plans to build from 6,000 to 9,000 MW of installed nuclear capacity based on Generation III and III+ large-scale, pressurised water reactor (PWR) designs.

Last November, Poland’s prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki announced the selection of Westinghouse Electric Company to build the country’s first nuclear power station, deploying the AP1000 reactor design.

Commercial operation of the first nuclear unit is planned for 2033, with further reactors to follow throughout the 2030s and into the early 2040s.

Several opinion polls in Poland have recently shown record support for the country’s nuclear energy projects, considered to be a good way to fight climate change and to ensure the country’s energy security.