Annual outage at Olkiluoto 1 nuclear power plant wins a prestigious award

The
2010 annual outage at the Olkiluoto 1 plant unit has won the international
"Outage of the year" award. The annual outage at OL1, which won the
vote by a landslide, improved the efficiency of the unit through several
upgrades resulting in an increase of ca 20 MW in the net electric output of the
plant unit. Alstom Power participated in the outage by replacement of all four
low-pressure turbines, the refurbishment of the generator cooling system and by
participating in the Balance-of-Plant works in the turbine hall and in the
reactor area.

The
competition is arranged by the Nuclear Engineering International Magazine. The
winner was elected by a vote between four finalists. The runners-up were the
annual outage at the Tsuruga nuclear power plant unit in Japan, the annual
outage at the Grand Gulf nuclear power plant unit in the United States and the
maintenance outage at the North Anna 1 nuclear power plant unit in the United
States.

Other
important upgrades implemented during the outage were refuelling, replacement
of the main seawater pumps and the inner extraction ducts of the turbine
condenser as well as the replacement of the inner isolation valves in the steam
lines of the reactor.

"This is a great acknowledgement
of our long-term work. I wish to thank the entire personnel of TVO as well as
everybody involved in the outage. You deserve the credit for this
accomplishment", states Mauri Hakola, the Manager of Outages and Plant Work
Coordination.

Alstom involved in the 2011 outage as
well

A
similar retrofit for the low-pressure steam turbines and generator cooling
system at Olkiluoto 2 was performed this summer. In addition to the turbine
retrofit also the generator was totally renewed and the project was executed in
a ”world record time” - in only 24 days.

Alstom
is a long-term partner of TVO and has already provided several major
modernisation solutions at the plant. Alstom has also a long-term service
agreement in place with Olkiluoto 1 & 2 since year 2000.

• Alstom Power in Finland

• Link to Alstom Power's Nuclear activities
• Link to TVO website