Part One of Two Parts
After reaching a peak in 1980, global reactor construction dropped until about 2007 before beginning to rise again. The International Atomic Energy Agency reports that there are sixty six nuclear power reactors under construction around the world and there are dozens more being planned and licensed. Twenty three of the new reactors under construction are being built in China. Their 2015 five year plan calls for the construction of forty nuclear reactors by 2020 and up to ten more every year from then on. Reactor construction is also underway in fifteen other countries with eight in Russia, six in India, five in the US, four in South Korea and the United Arab Emirates. Belarus, Japan, Pakistan, Slovakia, Taiwan, Ukraine are each building two. Argentina, Brazil, Finland and France are working on one each. It is estimated that there will be a world total of over a trillion dollars invested in the nuclear industry by 2030.
China is building some reactors based on foreign designs but it is also building Chinese designed reactors that are based on the reactors from international suppliers. China plans on becoming a major exporter of nuclear technology. China has massive construction and manufacturing capability and a lack of domestic projects. They are increasing their capacity to manufacture nuclear pressure vessels, turbines and other heavy components used in nuclear power stations with the expectation of exporting them.
While manufacture heavy equipment for the world market is nothing new, it has not been a part of the nuclear power reactors market before. Nuclear power reactors have to be constructed on-site and require many highly specialized parts. The manufacturing tolerances needed for these nuclear components are much more strict than many other industries. Sometimes, even the tools needed to build the parts must be custom built.
The steel pressure vessels that contain the reactors must be forged from solid steel ingots that weigh up to a million pounds. Only the largest steel presses in the world are capable of producing them. Before the present, there were only a few of such presses in the whole world. Currently eleven countries possess a combined total of at least twenty three of these massive presses. Steel used in components such as pressure vessels related to safety must be "nuclear grade" steel.
Areva, the French owned nuclear component manufacturer recently had problems with nuclear reactor pressure vessels. It was found that one of their pressure vessels installed in a French reactor project was made of steel that contained too much carbon. This made the steel weaker than required for such an application. The company had to take a new pressure vessel that had been made for a reactor project in England and use it for destructive testing of the high-carbon steel.
Nuclear reactors need thousands of other mechanical and electrical components. Many of these must be custom made for specific reactor projects. Even common products that might be used for other purposes must be made to exceptionally tight tolerances. Just as in any industry, there can be problems with quality control and fraud. A few years ago, it was discovered that a South Korean firm was swapping serials numbers from old components to new components in order to avoid the delay and cost of having the new components certified. Over half the components being manufacture and exported in Japan are never rigorously inspected.
Please read Part Two.
AREVA nuclear reactor pressure vessel:
