Taking advantage of the enthusiasm for nuclear energy aroused by the fight against climate change, SNC-Lavalin wins a $64 million contract in Romania to extend the life of a power plant, thus strengthening its position in a country which wants to further develop this sector to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions.
SNC-Lavalin’s nuclear division, Candu Energy, has been selected by Romania’s state-owned company Nuclearelectrica to provide design and engineering services to the Cernavoda nuclear power plant, located in the southeast of the country.
SNC-Lavalin’s work will focus on Unit 1 of the CANDU reactor. This alone produces 10% of all of Romania’s electricity. The objective: to extend the useful life of the reactor until 2060.
And this contract could well be the first of a long series, indicates to the To have to Senior Vice President, Marketing and Business Development at Candu Energy: “In the context of the fight against climate change, Romania really wants to restart its nuclear industry”.
In the 1990s, Romania had first planned the commissioning of four nuclear power plants operating from a CANDU 6 reactor. Only two were finally built, the first in 1996 and the second in 2007. Romania has increase its nuclear energy production capacity in the coming years.
“Units 3 and 4 have not been made, but Romania wants to build them. We can’t announce anything at the moment, but it should be possible to do it very quickly, “said the To have to Carl Marcotte, who was in Washington to meet Romania’s Energy Minister, Virgil-Daniel Popescu.
A still promising sector?
Romania is not the only country to consider nuclear energy as an energy that would allow it to considerably reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. “I spend my time chatting with existing or potential clients; everyone is talking about wanting to invest more both in large power plants and in what are called small modular reactors. People want to have discussions,” notes Mr. Marcotte.
Since the beginning of the year, SNC-Lavalin has multiplied announcements in the nuclear energy sector. In April, the Montreal company announced two major agreements to extend the operation of existing power plants in Canada.
At the same time, SNC-Lavalin has also increased its presence in the small modular reactor (SMR) sector. SMRs are nuclear power plants with a generating capacity of less than 300 MW, while the power of a typical reactor is between 700 MW and 1500 MW.
In February, the company partnered with Rolls-Royce to develop a PRM model that could be in service from 2030 in the United Kingdom. The Montreal company must extend its support to other facets with this partner, ranging from the safety of facilities to waste management, including handling and mechanical engineering.
This spring, it announced a partnership with Moltex Energy, a British company that is not only developing a new SMR model in New Brunswick, but also working on a process to recycle and reprocess up to 50% of radioactive waste from large power stations.