Japan’s
Hitachi Ltd. launched what it called a “100-year commitment” to the UK
nuclear sector today with the purchase of Horizon Nuclear Power for £696
million ($1.1 billion). The transaction is to close in 28 days.
“I
am extremely pleased that we have been successful in acquiring Horizon
Nuclear Power,” Hiroaki Nakanishi, President of Hitachi, Ltd. said in a
statement October 30. “Today starts our 100-year commitment to the UK
and its vision to achieve a long-term, secure, low-carbon, and
affordable energy supply,” Nakanishi said.
Hitachi
said it plans to build between two and three ABWR reactors on each of
the Horizon sites at Wylfa on the island of Anglesey in Wales and at
Oldbury in Gloucestershire, England.
Hitachi
has signed memorandum of understanding with three companies to take
forward its new build projects in the UK – Rolls Royce, Babcock
International and SNC Lavalin.
A
spokesman for Hitachi told i-NUCLEAR October 30 the MOUs were the start
of the conversation about the specific roles that each of the firms
would play in building the ABWRs and that no further details were
available.
Hitachi
was one of four bidders for Horizon, a 50-50 joint venture between
German utilities E.On and RWE. The German utilities announced last
March they were pulling out of the UK nuclear market and putting the development company up for sale.
Areva had previously announced it dropped out of the bidding for Horizon, as did Russia’s
Rosatom, while Westinghouse, which was widely assumed to be a bidder, has yet to confirm publicly that it was even in the bidding.
The development means that Westinghouse’s only
chance
for selling its AP1000 reactor in the UK appears to lie with
NuGeneration, the Iberdrola-GDF Suez consortium planning to build new
reactors on its Moorside site near Sellafield in northwest England.
Westinghouse did not respond to a request for comment.
GDA
The Hitachi spokesman also said Hitachi would begin immediately to pursue design certification of the ABWR in the UK.
Hitachi
has “penciled in” four years to complete the so-called “generic design
assessment”(GDA) process through the UK Office for Nuclear Regulation
(ONR), the spokesman said, but that there is some “positive thinking”
that GDA could be completed in a shorter period of time.
The
spokesman said it is thought that the time period could be shortened
because the ABWR is already licensed and operating in other countries
and because there are four ABWRs operating in Japan and two under
construction in Taiwan.
Plans are also advanced to build the ABWR as the
Visaginas NPP at Ignalina in Lithuania, where Hitachi is taking a 20% share in the project development company.
UK’s
GDA process is no longer a new process. ONR has already granted interim
design approvals to the Areva EPR and the Westinghouse AP1000.
A spokesman for ONR said October 30 that the regulator had “not been formally approached” about GDA for any new reactors.
He
said if ONR were approached, it and the Environment Agency “would have
formal discussions with the Department of Energy and Climate Change
(DECC) and the requesting party before making decisions about timescales
and resources.”
A DECC spokesman October 30 declined to comment, deferring queries about potential timeframe for design certification to ONR.
The ABWR (advanced boiling water reactor) would be the first boiling water reactor (BWR) type ever built in the UK.
Most
of the UK’s existing reactors are UK-designed advanced gas-cooled
reactors (AGRs), but it has one pressurised water reactor (PWR) at
Sizewell, based on a Westinghouse design.
The
ONR spokesman said that ONR and the Environment Agency have some degree
of expertise on BWRs already due to the fact that, although it
subsequently pulled out, the US-based GE Hitachi had previously
submitted its ESBWR design to ONR for GDA review.
“We
gained additional experience of BWR reactors through our extensive work
learning lessons from the Fukushima Dai-ichi accident,” the spokesman
added in a reply to i-NUCLEAR earlier this month.
Jobs
As
part of its plans, Hitachi said it would build a module assembly
facility in the UK for building the ABWR and transfer its modular
construction technology.
Hitachi
said it anticipates the creation of between 5,000 and 6,000 direct jobs
at each site during the construction phase and a further 1,000
permanent jobs per site upon start of the operation of each site.
Preliminary
estimates based on past build experience, indicate approximately 60% by
value of the first unit will be spent on locally sourced materials,
personnel and services, Hitachi said, with this rising for future units.
Hitachi
said it will make a significant investment in training engineers,
construction teams and operating staff for the plants, and will work
with its partners and with local colleges and universities to develop
training programmes, which will create a strong and permanent base of
nuclear skills in the UK that also have a global demand. –David Stellfox
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