Watch This Nuclear Player Boil

Watch This Nuclear Player Boil

by Debra Fiakas CFA

The last post on Chicago Bridge and Iron (CBI: NYSE) noted the entrance of CBI into the nuclear field with the acquisition of The Shaw Group, which has an exclusive relationship with Toshiba Corporation related to the Toshiba Advanced Boiling Water Reactor (ABWR).

 More evolutionary than revolutionary the ABWR is supposed to be superior other designs in its light water reactor class.  ABWR produces power by superheating water to the boiling point. The resulting steam is then used to drive a turbine attached to a generator.  Other light water reactors also heat water, but not to the boiling point.  Instead the heated water is held in a pressurized vessel and the energy generating heat is exchanged with a lower pressure vessel.  It is the heat exchange process that creates steam and drives the turbine.

The first basic boiling water reactors were produced in the early 1960s. There has been considerable tweaking of the design over the years, resulting in the advanced version in the late 1990s.  There are about a dozen or so deployments of the ABWR design by various power companies in the U.S., China and Japan, the only three jurisdictions where the ABWR design is licensed.  Construction continues on several and some of the older unit built in the 1990s and early 2000s are still in operation.  Indeed, several of the completed units have had to be taken off line for repairs of one kind or another.

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