A new generation of nuclear power plants
IDOM is working on the safety systems
The French company, Électricité de France (EDF), is close to completing the construction of the new 1,650 MWe nuclear reactor at Flamanville (Normandy). This new reactor design called the European Pressurized Reactor (EPR), is a Generation III+ reactor. The EPR is the evolution of the pressurized water reactors designed by the French firm AREVA-Framatome (reactor N4) and the German firm Siemens KWU (KONVOI), and includes numerous improvements to increase the safety margins, reducing the likelihood of core meltdown and mitigating its possible consequences, as well as increasing its capacity to resist seismic vibrations.
The new reactor incorporates important safety systems and improvements to the control room, safeguard buildings or fuel building whose ventilation systems are cooled by four 1,000 kW chillers, classified as Safety Related Units, that can perform additional emergency cooling functions of the safety injection pumps.
EDF has awarded the contract for the chillers to ENGIE Refrigeration GmbH, a firm based in Lindau (Germany). A further four units have also been ordered, two 380 kW units and two 3,000 kW units, to chill the different ventilation systems during normal operation.
Commissioned by ENGIE, IDOM is carrying out the supervision of the works and assembly of the eight units and auxiliary refrigeration systems. Given the multidisciplinary nature of our teams, IDOM has been able to provide ENGIE with the support for the necessary engineering studies to satisfy the requirements and modifications requested by EDF “in situ”, as well as resolving and adapting the existing designs to the real needs for assembly.
IDOM’s history of collaboration with ENGIE, which began in 2016 with this project, has been extended to other sectors to include the basic and detailed design of the refrigeration system at the Endrup (Denmark) and Eemshaven (Holand) converter stations for the High-Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) interconnection between the two countries. Thus, this close relationship is expected to continue in the future in all fields of action common to both firms.
