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Enercon Wins Contract to Prepare COL Applications for Bellefonte and Grand Gulf

By Eric McErlain
Just off the wire:
Enercon Services, Inc., a Tulsa-based company with offices nationwide, has been awarded a multi-million dollar contract by NuStart Energy to prepare Combined License Applications (COLA) for new nuclear power plants.

The project will be executed by a team of companies led by Enercon, which includes Burns and Roe Enterprises of Oradell, N. J., William Lettis and Associates of Walnut Creek Calif., MACTEC Engineering and Consulting of Charlotte, N. C. and McCallum/Turner of Evergreen, Colo. One application will be developed for the Westinghouse AP 1000 nuclear plant design for the two units at the TVA Bellefonte site in Alabama. The other application will be developed for the General Electric (GE) ESBWR at the Entergy Grand Gulf site in Mississippi.
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Comments

J Bowen said…
Westinghouse at Bellefonte? When the NSSS is from B&W? Did Westinghouse buy out B&W?
January 11, 2006 at 3:54 PM
Eric McErlain said…
No. Framatome purchased Babcock and Wilcox. If a new reactor is built at Bellefonte, it will be a Westinghouse design.
January 11, 2006 at 4:10 PM
J Bowen said…
Those plants were 80% and 50% complete as I recall, as of about 1985. You're telling me that they're yanking the B&W hardware?
January 11, 2006 at 4:17 PM
Eric McErlain said…
No. The NuStart Energy consortium has selected Bellefonte to apply for a combined construction and operating license. Just because NuStart is applying for a COL, does not mean that a plant will be built. However, they are proceeding with the COL application with the Westinghouse design.
January 11, 2006 at 4:27 PM
J Bowen said…
Obviously I'm missing something. I know that Grand Goof has GE hardware - I think it's a BWR-6. So if it's being used as some sort of model for future COLs for GE designs, that makes sense.

But I know doggone well that Bellefonte has B&W hardware. I was an engineer on the site for 3 long years. That makes them seem like a lousy model for Westinghouse designs.

And although Westinghouse might well have changed their designs, one major difference in the NSSS between them is that Westinghouse used 2 to 4 multipass steam generators. Bellefonte had 2 once-thru steam generators per unit, mounted in their own "d-rings" of concrete.

What am I missing here?
January 11, 2006 at 4:59 PM
Kevin McCoy said…
Bellefonte-1 and -2 are still at the Bellefonte site, unfinished. At least for now, TVA has no plans to finish them.

The COL will be for new reactors adjacent to -1 and -2. If that's "yanking the B&W hardware", yes, that's what TVA plans to do. There was a big study a couple of years ago that concluded that it did not make economic sense to finish -1 and -2. I suppose it's still possible that -1 and -2 will be finished someday, but that does not seem especially likely.
January 11, 2006 at 5:20 PM
J Bowen said…
OK, I hadn't heard of the study you mentioned. Having been out of the business for more than a decade I'm out of touch.

So the old plant will be abandoned, like the ghosts at Phipps Bend, Hartsville and Yellow Creek. What a waste. And they have some decommissioning to do at the old plant too.

But at least they're using the site. Maybe they can still use the intake, ERCW and cooling towers. BNP locals never had an operating nuke close by, but at least they're used to the idea and they'll come to love the jobs and the tax dollars. Scottsboro wasn't exactly an economic dynamo as I recall - bringing in some outsiders won't hurt a bit.

It's good to see nukes coming back. Maybe I won't need to use my backup plan of catching greens and burning them for fuel.
January 11, 2006 at 8:02 PM
Anonymous said…
Good news, but it is too late. The ball was dropped long ago when the post chernobyl kneejerking became a fad.
January 12, 2006 at 6:32 AM
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