GE-Hitachi wins Exelon outage contract

General Electric-Hitachi (GEH) has been awarded a $150 million integrated outage contract to help service Exelon's fleet of 12 boiling water reactors (BWRs). Effective immediately, the agreement will run through to the completion of the outage season in 2015.

The terms of the contract, announced on 29 August, will see GEH support activities on the refuelling floor and perform inspection and under-vessel services during outages. The company has also committed to deploying new technologies to help reduce worker dose, enhance safety and improve plant performance.

The contract represents a continuation of the decades-long involvement between the companies – General Electric is the original designer of Exelon's BWRs.

Outage management is important to both overall safety and profitability. For a well-run plant, it is the refuelling and maintenance outage that is responsible for most of the time a reactor spends offline. This is all captured in a plant's capacity factor. The higher the capacity factor, the more electricity a reactor of a given size is generating and the more money it is earning.

Exelon speaks proudly of its capacity factors, which stand among the best in the industry. For the seven consecutive years ending in 2009 it has achieved a fleet-wide average capacity factor of greater than 93%. As well as operating 12 BWRs, Exelon also operates five pressurised water reactors for a grand total of 17, making it the largest nuclear generator in the USA.
  

Researched and written 

by World Nuclear News