Horizon appoints JV for Wylfa Newydd project

The UK's Horizon Nuclear Power has today appointed a joint venture responsible for construction of its Wylfa Newydd plant. The newly created company, Menter Newydd, is a joint venture of Hitachi Nuclear Energy Europe, Bechtel Management Company and JGC Corporation (UK).

The UK's Horizon Nuclear Power has today appointed a joint venture responsible for construction of its Wylfa Newydd plant. The newly created company, Menter Newydd, is a joint venture of Hitachi Nuclear Energy Europe, Bechtel Management Company and JGC Corporation (UK).

How the Wylfa Newydd plant could look alongside the existing Wylfa plant (Image: Horizon)

Established in 2009 and acquired by Hitachi in November 2012, Horizon aims to provide at least 5.4 GWe of new capacity across two sites - Wylfa Newydd, which is on the Isle of Anglesey, and Oldbury-on-Severn, in South Gloucestershire - by deploying Hitachi-GE UK Advanced Boiling Water Reactors. It expects the first unit at Wylfa to be operating in the first half of the 2020s.

Horizon said the partners in Menter Newydd - which means New Venture in Welsh - have been involved in the delivery of more than 170 nuclear power stations, as well as a range of large infrastructure projects.

Hitachi Nuclear Energy Europe draws on Hitachi's 50-year history of boiling water reactor deployment, including four ABWRs, Horizon noted. Bechtel last year completed construction of the first nuclear power station authorised to operate in the USA this century, at Watts Bar in Tennessee, it added.

Duncan Hawthorne, Horizon CEO, said: "This is an important step in any large, complex infrastructure project and it adds to Wylfa Newydd's growing momentum. The depth and breadth of expertise Hitachi Nuclear Energy Europe, Bechtel and JGC bring to the Menter Newydd venture will help us ensure the timely delivery of our project, which will be vital for meeting the UK's energy gap and boosting the local economy in North Wales for decades to come."

Hitachi's Malcolm Twist, project director for Menter Newydd, said the new company establishes "the balance of expertise to safely deliver for Horizon, on-cost and on-schedule". It expects to begin "firming up relationships with our main sub-contractors - many of them British - very soon", he added.

Hitachi-GE, which has been operating under front-end engineering design, or FEED, contract with Horizon for more than three years, will continue to provide the UK ABWR technology, under sub-contract to Menter Newydd.

Horizon has recently completed a further stage of public consultation in North Wales, launched its apprenticeship scheme, and appointed Hawthorne, formerly president and CEO of Canada's Bruce Power, as its CEO. Site development work is also continuing to advance, it said, and the UK ABWR remains on track to complete its regulatory Generic Design Assessment by the end of 2017.

Researched and written
by World Nuclear News