Areva will supply a decade’s worth of fuel to Minnesota’s Monticello nuclear plant under a contract announced Wednesday.
Starting in 2015, Areva will deliver its ATRIUM 10XM fuel to the Xcel Energy plant. The $500 million contract includes uranium, enrichment, fuel fabrication and related engineering services.
“This contract represents the start of a productive working relationship between AREVA and Xcel Energy, one we believe will benefit our customers by controlling fuel costs,” Xcel’s chief nuclear officer Dennis Koehl said in an Areva release.
The plant northwest of Minneapolis uses a single 579 megawatt General Electric type 3 boiling water reactor with Mark I containment, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. It was first licensed in 1981, and a license renewal granted in 2006 will allow it to operate until 2030.
Refuelings are scheduled every 24 months, and Monticello last shut down for maintenance last year, according to Xcel. Other work completed during the nine-week outage included a power uprate, replacement of eight control rod blades, a new security access facility and rewiring work to meet new NRC fire protection regulations.