Proposed expansion of the Comanche Peak plant will use Advanced Pressurized Water Reactor
– By Thomas Cheplick –
On July 1st, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) signed a memorandum of understanding with the Comanche Peak Nuclear Power Company (CP Nuclear Power) to study a proposed expanision of the Comanche Peak Nuclear Power Plant in Somervell County, Texas, which is 40 miles southwest of Fort Worth.
The two companies have announced that they will jointly negotiate the engineering and procurement contracts, and the preliminary construction plan, necessary to create a proposed expansion plan of the Comanche Peak Nuclear Power Plant.
The memorandum and concurrent company negotiations are not expected to result in any immediate capital commitment, but are seen as helping ongoing discussions with both American and Japanese financial institutions like the Nippon Export and Investment Insurance company (NEXI) in securing plant expansion funding.
The Comanche Peak Nuclear Power Company is a joint venture of the Luminant Generation Company and Mitsubishi Nuclear Energy Systems (MNES). These two companies have also signed onto the memorandum of understanding to prepare plans for proposed Comanche expansion.
Comanche Peak Nuclear Power Company will own and also oversee development and construction of the proposed new units at the plant. The proposed new units will use the US-APWR (Advanced Pressurized Water Reactor), which is Mitsubishi Heavy Industries' advanced reactor design for the U.S. market. The Luminant Generation company, which will be building and operating some of the proposed new units, wanted the US-APWR following an extensive review of nuclear generating technologies that was conducted in 2007. Each new US-APWR reactor unit is capable of production 1,700 megawatts or about enough energy to roughly power 875,000 Texas homes.
However, the US-APWR despite being submitted by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission for design certification in December 2007 is still currently under Commission review. Mitsubishi introduced the US-APWR to the U.S. market in July 2006.
Luminant submitted its application to build and operate Comanche Peak Units 3 and 4 in September of 2008, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission accepted the application for review in December of that year. The Commission is expected to complete its review of Luminant's application to build and operate these units by December 2011.
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries since 1970 has built 23 PWR-based reactors in Japan. The company is constructing its 24th, which is presently undergoing final testing, in the country. Mitsubishi continues to provide maintenance services to the plants.