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Nuclear power challenges at KGHM Polska Miedź

31st Economic Forum Expert Features

KGHM is Poland’s second-largest industrial consumer of electricity, with an annual consumption of about 3 TWh, which requires nearly constant access to sources with the capacity of 400 MW. Climate challenges, the COVID-19 crisis, and the war in Ukraine are making Energy one of the company’s five strategic development directions along with Flexibility, Efficiency, Ecology, and E-industry.

The need to open up to safe nuclear power has coincided with the emergence of several SMR designs with the proven light-water technology that dominates the world’s nuclear power industry. KGHM chose to cooperate with NuScale Power, and the contract between the companies was signed on 14 February 2022. The design of the 462 MW modular VOYGR™-6 plant meets KGHM’s needs and is mature in three key areas: technological, regulatory, and business.

The design basis water parameters in the reactor core area will be similar to those prevailing in large-scale, light-water pressurized reactors. The essence of the innovation is the integrated design of the modules, which will be manufactured and tested at the factory, and delivered to the construction site. Each module is enclosed in a steel containment, inside which the reactor vessel is placed. The core is located at the bottom of the reactor vessel, and above it there is the steam generator, which eliminates the pipelines connecting the reactor vessel to the steam generator. The gravitational convection in the approximately 20-meter high vessel is sufficiently stable to eliminate the circulation pumps in the circuit that provides direct cooling of the core. The integrated, simplified design also reduces the costs and improves the safety, as it eliminates the risk of failure of the removed systems, including accidents associated with large-break loss of coolant.

In normal operating conditions, there is vacuum in the space between the containment and the reactor vessel, which provides good thermal insulation and high thermodynamic efficiency of electricity generation. The location of the modules in a water pool, on the other hand, improves safety, because in the accident conditions the space between the containment and the reactor vessel is filled with steam and water, which allows for emergency heat removal from the reactor core to the water in the pool.

NuScale Power – A Scalable Clean Energy Solution
January 11, 2020
José Reyes
Co-founder & Chief Technology Officer
National Academies Study – Merits and Viability of Different Nuclear Fuel Cycles and Technology Options and the Waste Aspects of Advanced Nuclear Reactors
https://www.nationalacademies.org/event/01-11-2021/docs/D1E0FF59357EA7F7248CC17703A20611465DCE8FCE65

In 2020, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission granted a general approval (SDA, Standard Design Approval), and in July 2022 – a final certification for 50 MW modules and a plant with 12 modules. As a result, the NuScale design joined the list of six US-certified designs: ABWR, System 80+, AP600, AP1000, ESBWR, and APR1400. No other companies that offer SMRs have submitted an application to the US regulatory authority or to any reputable regulatory authority in the Euro-Atlantic economic area for certification of a design with a level of detail comparable to that submitted by NuScale Power in 2017. NuScale Power has declared that it would apply for certification of modules with an increased capacity of up to 77 MW later this year.

Submission of an application for certification of a design means that a significant part of the technical documentation is made public, which facilitates independent scientific research. As a result, the safety of the designs certified in the USA and by other reputable regulatory authorities is much better studied and more reliable. Scientific works based on publicly available data on the NuScale design have also been conducted in Poland, at the Faculty of Energy and Fuels of the AGH University of Science and Technology, and have resulted in the award of two PhDs. This allowed the KGHM to tap into its expert base, which made it possible to efficiently prepare the first pre-licensing documents and submit a request to the President of the NAEA (National Atomic Energy Agency) on 8 July 2022 for a general opinion on the planned technical and organizational solutions.

NuScale Power was established in 2007 as a spin-off of a research program. As early as in 2011, FLUOR became its investor, which enabled access to grants worth several hundred million dollars, funded in a 50/50 formula. The cost of the design to date is estimated at $1.3 billion. In early May 2022, NuScale Power went public and was valued at around $2.0 billion. FLUOR remained its majority investor and its strategic investors include Doosan of South Korea, which has already begun forging reactor vessels for the first project in Idaho. The project has already received a promise of $1.4 billion in support. In June 2022, at the G7 summit, President Joe Biden mentioned NuScale as a company that contributes to the strengthening of energy security and declared support for the design, which is so mature that three units, each with the capacity of 462 MW, are planned to be built almost simultaneously in the USA, Romania, and Poland, and put into operation before 2030.

The implementation of the plans will soon not only show the KGHM’s ability to achieve its objectives, but also bring us closer to answering the question about the role of modular nuclear power plants in the Polish and global energy industry.


Author: Ludwik Pieńkowski – AGH professor, expert KGHM

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