Westinghouse South Africa, a unit of US nuclear group Westing-house Electric, will play a central role in the American group’s localisation operations should South Africa chose its AP1000 design for its future new nuclear power plant (NPP) programme. (At the moment, the country plans to generate 9.6 GW of electricity from nuclear power by 2030, which would require the construction of nine AP1000s.)

“Westinghouse South Africa is a branch of our main company and reports to our European operations,” explains Westing-house Electric international project development director Robert Pearce. “It supplies engineering, design and con- sulting capability in South Africa. It would be pivotal if we were to win some of the new NPP procurement.”

Currently, the South African unit numbers fewer than 50 people, most of them based in Cape Town (to be near the Koeberg NPP), but there is also an office in Centurion, just south of Pretoria. “Westinghouse South Africa would need to grow dramatically to support the local [new NPP] programme through project management, developing the supply chain and engineering,” he states. “At the end of the day, the work needs to be managed locally. It needs to have a project management team here [in South Africa].” Currently, the main customers of the local unit are national electricity utility Eskom (owner and operator of Koeberg) and the South African Nuclear Energy Corporation (Necsa).

“Right now, Westinghouse South Africa is involved in a bid to replace Koeberg’s stream generators,” he reports. “That would be a very big contract, worth billions [of rands]. It’s an open tender and we’re one of the bidders. It is part of the programme to revitalise Koeberg and increase its power output.” This project has three aspects – the provision of the new generators, their installation and the handling of all the associated regulatory aspects. “These are separate but interrelated contracts. They could conceivably go to different companies.”

Westinghouse Electric has a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Necsa, under which the US group will help the South African company to achieve the standards necessary to manufacture and supply nonuranium metallic components for fuel assemblies. “There is a qualification process Necsa has to go through,” points out Pearce.

The US company also has an MoU with private-sector South African company Sebata, which is (in the words of the local company’s website) an “end-to-end integrated technology solutions, enterprise management systems and multidisciplinary professional services” company. Its main focus is on local, provincial and national governments, parastatals and other public entities. The MoU is primarily concerned with skills development and training.

Westinghouse technology provides the basis for almost 50% of the world’s operating commercial NPPs, including those built by other companies. The group perfected the pressurised water reactor (PWR) technology and has been a world leader in technology transfer to countries including France, Japan and South Korea.

In addition to its own Generation III+ AP1000 design, Westinghouse Electric has been involved in the development of other new NPP designs in cooperation with partner companies in other countries. These include Japan’s Advanced PWR and the (South) Korean Next Generation Reactor.

Regarding the AP1000, this has a design capacity of 1 140 MWe. Currently, four AP1000s are being built in China, at Haiyang and Sanmen. In the US, two more are under construction at Vogtle, in Georgia, and another two in Fairfield County, South Carolina.

Westinghouse Electric is also one of the world’s leading pro-ducers of nuclear fuel, with facilities in the US, Sweden and the UK as well as joint venture operations in China, Japan and Spain. The group provides fuel for a variety of NPP designs, not just PWRs. In addition, it makes and installs automated instrumentation and control systems for NPPs.
Finally, the group can provide the full range of nuclear services for both PWRs and boiling water reactors, including engineering services, field services and instal- lation and modification services, as well as manufacturing specialised nuclear components from stainless steels and high-alloy steels. Westinghouse Electric is part of Japan’s Toshiba group.