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Toshiba-Westinghouse for EdF generator coils

Thursday, 23 October 2008

A Toshiba-Westinghouse consortium will renew the stator coils of Electricité de France (EdF) nuclear power units at more than ten power plants. This closely follows a contract from EdF with Alstom for the renovation of generators at it plants.

A Toshiba-Westinghouse consortium has been awarded a contract by Electricité de France (EdF) for the renewal of stator coils in the generators of more than ten of its nuclear power plants.

A stator rewind of a rather smaller scale (Image: Westinghouse)

The contract - which will run over ten years and is worth more than €100 million ($128 million) - closely follows a contract from EdF with Alstom, also concerning the renovation of generators at its nuclear power plants. The orders coming from this contract will also run over ten years and will be worth a total of more than €140 million ($188 million), according to Alstom, the original supplier of the units. The first generator rewinds are planned for 2010 at the Belleville and Chooz nuclear power plants.

The contract with the Toshiba-Westinghouse consortium is part of the French utility's continuous program to retrofit the key components of its 58 operating nuclear power plants in France.

Toshiba said that, following initial pre-installation arrangements, manufacture of stator windings will start in spring 2009 at its Keihin Products Operations plant in Yokohama, Japan. The company said that it expects that three or four rewinding operations a year will be conducted for 900 MWe and 1300 MWe generators, starting in 2010.

Yasuharu Igarashi, corporate vice president of Toshiba and president and CEO of Toshiba's Power Systems Company, commented: "We are delighted to be awarded this valuable contract to support EdF in its important long-term project to maintain and assure the stable operation of its nationwide network of nuclear power plants."

Apart from one experimental fast breeder reactor (Phenix), all French units are now pressurised water reactors (PWRs) of three standard types designed by Framatome, now Areva NP (the first two were derived from US Westinghouse designs): 900 MWe, 1300 MWe and 1450 MWe N4 type. EdF operates 34 reactors of the 900 MWe design, 20 of the 1300 MWe model and 4 reactors of the N4 type.