A South Carolina plant has completed fuel assemblies for the world’s first nuclear plant using Westinghouse’s AP1000 reactor design.
On Monday, Toshiba subsidiary Westinghouse announced the Columbia Fuel Fabrication Facility completed 157 fuel assemblies for Sanmen 1 in China’s Zhejiang province. Sanmen is the flagship plant for the AP1000, which also has been selected for an additional Sanmen unit and two reactors at Haiyang. In the U.S., construction is underway on four AP1000s at Georgia’s Plant Vogtle and South Carolina’s V.C. Summer plant.
"Up until now, the Columbia plant has been producing fuel primarily for the first generation of plants around the world, but now we are introducing a new fleet of plants—AP1000 or 'advanced passive' plants—that will need fuel until late in the century. We look forward to also providing fuel for the AP1000 plants that will be built in the United States," Columbia plant manager David Precht said in a Westinghouse release.