Westinghouse, OPG team up
Ontario Power Generation (OPG) and Westinghouse have agreed to explore opportunities to work together on a wide range of global nuclear projects.
Through its Canadian Nuclear Partners (CNP) subsidiary, OPG has signed a memorandum of understanding with Westinghouse. The two companies will investigate cooperating in the provision of refurbishment, maintenance and outages services, decommissioning and clean-up of existing nuclear facilities, as well as new nuclear power plants.
Westinghouse - majority owned by Japan's Toshiba - provides engineering and project management services, plant modifications, outage and maintenance services, instrumentation and control upgrades, nuclear fuel and its AP1000 reactor. OPG's principal business is the generation and supply of electricity in Ontario. It operates ten Candu reactors at two sites: Pickering and Darlington. Between them, the units provide about one-third of the province's electricity.
In order to exploit its experience from operating and modernizing the Pickering and Darlington units, OPG formed CNP in 2012 to explore new business lines and opportunities inside and outside Ontario. Its services include outage management, inspections, inspection tool development, refurbishment, decommissioning and radioactive waste management. CNP's first project was to provide support for the return to service of NB Power's Point Lepreau plant following its refurbishment.
The new agreement follows recent collaboration between Westinghouse and OPG on several projects. Westinghouse is currently designing filtered containment vents at OPG's Darlington nuclear power plant as part of the site's refurbishment.
OPG president and CEO Tom Mitchell commented, "OPG is pleased to work with Westinghouse and looks forward to exploring possible synergies between our companies. We anticipate that OPG's expertise in plant maintenance, upgrades and refurbishments will be well augmented by the service offerings and global experience of Westinghouse."
Meanwhile, Westinghouse president and CEO Danny Roderick noted, "This relationship will further add to Westinghouse's advanced products and services that support our global customers' efforts to improve operating efficiencies and achieve cost-effective energy security and diversity while not damaging the environment with greenhouse-gas-emitting sources."
Researched and written
by World Nuclear News
