L-3 Communications MAPPS, a wholly owned subsidiary of L-3 Communications, announced today that it will supply a full-scale European Pressurized water Reactor (EPR) simulator for the Finnish electricity utility, Teollisuuden Voima Oy (TVO). The contract, awarded by AREVA’s joint subsidiary with Siemens, Framatome ANP, calls for delivery of the simulator in 2007 to give operators a full year of training before the Olkiluoto 3 (OL3) EPR enters service. In other related orders, Framatome ANP has also selected L-3 MAPPS to develop an engineering simulator for the EPR and to upgrade its three existing engineering simulators for the French CP2 (900 MW), DPY (1,300 MW) and N4 (1,450 MW) nuclear plant types, which are used by Framatome ANP.
Constrained by insufficient natural resources to meet its growing energy needs, Finland is moving forward with the EPR project to satisfy mounting energy demand and to become more self-sufficient, while complying with Kyoto commitments. The EPR will have a capacity of about 1,600 MW and is scheduled to start commercial operation in 2009.
“The EPR project represents an outstanding opportunity to expand our business into a completely new sector,” said Rashid Khan, president of L-3 MAPPS. “This first-of-a-kind simulator order is analogous to our first simulator order in 1973 for Pickering A, a Canadian nuclear power plant, which ultimately led to our strong position today in the power plant simulation market.”
TVO awarded the OL3 project to a consortium led by AREVA and Siemens. Within the consortium, the nuclear island will be supplied by Framatome ANP, which will act as overall project coordinator, and the turbine island will be managed by Siemens Power Generation.
TVO is a privately owned electricity generation company owned by Finnish industry and power companies. The company supplies electricity to its shareholders at cost and owns and operates two nuclear power plant units on the west coast of Finland at Olkiluoto in the municipality of Eurajoki.
The existing engineering simulators-known as Simulateurs d’Analyse du Fonctionnement-are located at the AREVA Tower in Paris La Défense (France) and are used to perform plant engineering and emergency response training, operating procedures analysis and improvement, system design modifications and preliminary safety analysis. With the existing simulators currently running on a Unix-based Harris Nighthawk simulation computer and a third-party’s simulation software, L-3 MAPPS and Framatome ANP will collaborate in migrating the current software to a PC server with L-3 MAPPS’ advanced simulation environment. Ultimately, the CP2, DPY, N4 and EPR engineering simulators will all be based on a common simulation environment.