Decommissioning Complete at Unit 2 of Sweden's Barseback Nuclear Plant

Written by Martin Lynch, European News Editor for Industrial Info (Galway, Ireland)--Decommissioning at one of Sweden's oldest nuclear reactors has been completed by Westinghouse Electric Corporation (Cranberry Township, Pennsylvania).

The company confirmed that decommissioning at Unit 2 of the Barseback nuclear power plant has concluded after more than 18 months. The 600-megawatt (MW) unit is one of two at the plant, which was commissioned in 1977, and closed in 2005. The plant is located about 30 kilometres (km) from the city of Malmo in southern Sweden. Decommissioning began in August 2016 and is the first Nordic decommissioning project undertaken by the company. It now expects to move forward with decommissioning Unit 1, which was closed in 1995, with an estimated completion date of April 2019. The plant's closure was a political decision made by the then Swedish government after decades of pressure from neighbouring Denmark.

The scope of decommissioning work included the underwater segmentation and packaging of the reactor vessel internals, as well as the upfront engineering studies and equipment manufacturing and qualification.

"Westinghouse is proud to deliver this major decommissioning project on time and on budget," said Yves Brachet, Westinghouse senior vice president of global decommissioning, decontamination, remediation and waste management. "Our global expertise in this area will help our customers in the Nordic region to safely manage a variety of end-of-life opportunities for commercial nuclear power plants."

The company worked with plant operator Barsebäck Kraft AB (BKAB). Commenting on the work, Åsa Carlson, BKAB managing director, said: "The success of this project is a result of close cooperation and proves that the Swedish back-end system works as intended."

Nuclear power accounts for roughly 35% of the country's total electricity demand, which is supplied by eight operational reactors at three plants: Ringhals, Forsmark and Oskarshamn. Last summer, Industrial Info reported that German energy major E.ON AG (FWB:EOAN) (Düsseldorf, Germany) had announced the early shutdown of the Unit 1 reactor at the Oskarshamn nuclear power plant--Sweden's oldest nuclear plant. For additional information, see June 28, 2017, article - Sweden Shuts Oldest Nuclear Reactor Early.

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