Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd. (MHI) is developing the US-Advanced Pressurized Water Reactor (US-APWR) including turbine island for deployment at various locations in the United States. MHI is providing the technology, and Black & Veatch is designing the turbine island in a standard plant format. This effort will support cost estimates and future site-specific designs for deployment at the owner’s selected sites. The scope of the project advances the design to a level consistent with an approximate 25 percent completion level.
A turbine island comprises the turbine generator enclosure and its installed components, as well as an electrical building. The joint MHI and Black & Veatch design will be capable of supplying 1,700 megawatt class electric power. Black & Veatch’s work also involves applying a Japanese technology and modifying it for deployment in the United States.
The technology is being developed by MHI in Japan, with the design work performed at Black & Veatch’s world headquarters in Overland Park, Kansas. Black & Veatch engineers have been working collaboratively on a daily basis with 10 Mitsubishi Nuclear Energy Systems, Inc. (MNES) professionals dispatched from MHI Japan, who have been residents in the Overland Park office.
“We have few nuclear engineering experiences in the United States applying U.S. regulatory or code requirements,” said Koichiro Yamamoto, Deputy General Manager, Nuclear Turbine Plant Engineering Department, MHI. “Black & Veatch is a company with a very wide knowledge of the regulatory requirements and standard practices of U.S. utilities and code requirements of organizations, such as the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) and Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) Regulatory Guide. This helped us proceed with the design requirements for NRC.”
Black & Veatch offered MHI expertise in integrated 3-D design control and configuration management. This helped align US-APWR design documentation to meet U.S. nuclear industry expectations for safe and reliable operation of nuclear plants.
