SNC-Lavalin said it had signed an engineering service contract and a licensing agreement with China’s Third Qinshan Nuclear Power Company Limited (TQNPC) to implement 37M Natural Uranium Equivalent (NUE) fuel, a mixture of depleted and recycled uranium, in Qinshan’s CANDU reactors Units 1 and 2.
SNC-Lavalin’s work under the contract includes design definition, design verification, update of reactor nuclear design and safety case, regulatory support and licensing, the company said. It is a contract valued at over CAD $12 million.
SNC-Lavalin President, Nuclear, Sandy Taylor called the contract a "landmark agreement." The contract "will see the 37M fuel technology put into commercial use outside of Canada for the first time and takes advantage of the ample supply of depleted and recycled uranium in China,” Taylor said.
The development of 37M fuel in Ontario was a collaboration between OPG (Ontario Power Generation) - the originator of the 37M design and its CANDU industry partners in the CANDU Owners Group to perform important testing and technology development. OPG’s subsidiary Canadian Nuclear Partners licensed the 37M design to SNC-Lavalin which facilitated collaboration and further development by SNC-Lavalin, the original designer of the CANDU reactors used in China and around the world.
"This work contributes towards a version of the 37M fuel bundle design for use in those reactors," the company said. The first-ever fuel bundle to test the use of recycled uranium from light water reactors was successfully demonstrated in Qinshan Unit 1 in 2010.
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