ABB has won a $45 million order from Swedish utility Vattenfall to provide engineering services and supply a range of power products for a 160MWe upgrade of Forsmark 3.
ABB’s Sweden-based centre of competence for nuclear power plant projects will carry out the project, which will involve electrical system studies, design, engineering, installation and commissioning. ABB will provide the electrical package for the upgrade. Power products to be supplied by the company include three generator step-up transformers, two auxiliary transformers and an excitation transformer.
The upgrade will increase the capacity of the boiling water reactor (BWR) from its current 1200MWe to 1360MWe, and is due to be completed by 2014. As well as increasing the output from the plant the upgrade should also increase plant’s operating life-span, according to ABB.
The unit itself restarted on 1 January, after a 71-day extended maintenance outage following the discovery of cracks in control rods. Swedish radiation safety authority SSM ruled that interim measures taken at the plant were adequate to authorise a restart until the next scheduled outage on 31 July 2009 but says that a long-term solution to the problem, caused by thermal fatigue overload, must be found. OKG’s Oskarshamn 3 has been afflicted by similar problems.
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