Spain’s Iberdrola and Nuclenor have awarded GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy (GEH) with multi-year services contracts to help

ensure the long-term reliability, availability and safe operation of the Cofrentes and Santa María de Garoña nuclear power plants.

The Cofrentes station, located in the province of Valencia and owned by Iberdrola, generates power using a GE boiling water reactor (BWR) that began operating in 1985. The Cofrentes station is one of the largest of Spain’s eight nuclear power plants and generates nearly 5 percent of Spain’s electricity. The S.M. Garoña station, located in the province of Burgos and owned by Nuclenor, uses a GE BWR that has been in operation since 1971. Nuclenor is split-owned by Iberdrola and Endesa.

Under terms of the six-year, multi-cycle services agreement—which contains options to extend the agreement to 10 years—GEH will provide a broad scope of outage and refueling services to ensure the optimal performance of the stations, including:

-Drywell and vessel head disassembly/assembly

-Reactor pressure vessel (RPV) maintenance

-Visual and ultrasonic Inspections

In addition, GEH and the utilities intend to establish the needed infrastructure to promote more effective collaboration between the two companies, including a new steering committee, a leadership group, an asset management plan and an engineering consulting program. For example, the GEH-Iberdrola steering committee and the Cofrentes staff will develop an RPV asset plan and risk management strategy.

GENUSA, the European BWR fuel joint venture between Global Nuclear Fuel (GNF) and Spanish nuclear fuel company ENUSA, will provide nuclear fuel reloads under a separate agreement. GNF is the GE majority-owned fuel fabrication and fuel engineering services venture jointly established by GE, Hitachi and Toshiba.

“GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy looks forward to extending our decades-long relationship with Iberdrola, Nuclenor and their staffs as our new agreement creates an even deeper level of collaboration than ever before,” said Kevin Lagasse, senior vice president of global nuclear services for GEH. “Our agreement is just the latest example of how we support the optimal performance and output of nuclear power plants around the world.”