Changing alliances in the US

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The US power utility Dominion has dissolved its partnership with AECL Technologies to study the feasibility of building a Canadian designed ACR-700 (Advanced Candu Reactor) in the US in order to enter a partnership with General Electric (GE) that would use GE's Economic and Simplified Boiling Water Reactor (ESBWR). The company's main concern was how long the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) would take to licence a Canadian reactor. GE is currently holding pre-application discussions with the NRC on certification of the ESBWR and expects a decision in 2007. However AECL Technologies says it still intends to pursue the design certification application. There are currently three consortia seeking to license a new US power reactors as part of the DOE's Nuclear Power 2010 programme and GE are now involved in all of them. The NuStart consortium is considering GE's ESBWR, along with the Westinghouse Advanced Passive 1000. The Tennessee Valley Authority consortium is considering the GE-Toshiba Advanced Boiling Water Reactor (ABWR), of which three are operating in Japan and several more are under construction in Asia. In a separate development Southern Nuclear Operating Company has asked the DOE to help fund a study into the feasibility of filing an early site permit to build a new reactor at one of its three existing plants - the Farley plant in Alabama, and the Hatch and Vogtle plants, both in Georgia. An early site permission allows them to build any licensed reactor type on the site.

 

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