The Swedish Nuclear Fuel and Waste Management Company (SKB) is coordinating an effort to manage and dispose of all radioactive waste from Swedish nuclear power plants.

To assist with the project, SKB has a contract with the Westinghouse Electric Company tasking the Pennsylvania-headquartered firm with increasing the capacity of the cooling system at its Central Interim Storage Facility for spent nuclear fuel of 8,000 to 11,000 tons.

Under a process expected to take three year to complete, the Westinghouse Electric Sweden AB will design, procure, deliver and install the new cooling system, as well as decommission the existing system.

The storage facility is located outside the Swedish city of Oskarshamn, which is also the site of a nuclear power facility that currently supplies Sweden with about 10 percent of its annual electrical supply.

“This project confirms Westinghouse’s position in the spent fuel management market,” says Aziz Dag, vice president and managing director of the company’s Northern Europe operations.

ENGINEERING SERVICES AND HIGH-LEVEL WASTE MANAGEMENT ARE NOTHING NEW FOR THE COMPANY

The company’s previous work in processing spent nuclear fuel “has proven good results. We are pleased to have the opportunity to continue providing SKB with our high technology products and services,” adds Dag.

In September 2013, Westinghouse was awarded a similar contract from ENRESA (Empresa Nacional de Residuos Radiactivos), the Spanish government agency in Madrid that is responsible for radioactive waste management and nuclear plant decommissioning.

That work for ENRESA involved providing the main engineering services for the company’s centralized high-level waste and spent fuel interim storage facility.

In 1957, Westinghouse Electric built the world’s first pressurized water reactor in Shippingport, Pennsylvania. The company’s technology is currently utilized in approximately one-half of the world’s operating nuclear plants, with more than 50 percent of those in Europe.