After over 500 hours of testing, reactors coolant pumps for the world’s first AP1000 are ready to be shipped to the Sanmen 1 plant in China.
Westinghouse announced the “successful completion of the design, manufacture and qualification of the lead AP1000 Reactor Coolant Pump (RCP),” on 16 April. It added that shipment of the first two RCPs for Sanmen 1 is expected to occur in the second quarter of 2012.
The pumps were manufactured and tested by Curtiss-Wright’s Flow Control Division, based in Pennsylvania. The company is building 16 RCPs for the first two AP1000 plants in China.
Wang Binghua Chairman of State Nuclear Power Technology Corporation, owners of the four AP1000 units currently being constructed in China, said that SNPTC, Westinghouse and Curtiss-Wright had “jointly overcome the challenges with the AP1000 RCPs.”
