Overview
The cooling of nuclear reactors through use of constantly maintained liquid flows is critical. To attend to our customers in the nuclear sector, we have residual heat removal pumps, charging pumps, main and auxiliary reactor feedwater pumps, containment spray pumps, medium head safety injection pump, concrete volute cooling water pumps, screw pumps, rotary vane pumps, control valves and containment sampling isolation valves. All of these items are fully compliant with international certification standards (including ASME and RCC).
Our involvement in the nuclear power market began with the first ever industrial scale nuclear power plant and continues with nuclear pump and valve installations in over 65% of operational nuclear power plants worldwide.
ClydeUnion Pumps offers a comprehensive Class 1, Class 2 and Class 3 product range and can also provide a full conventional island product offering designed for the high reliability and availability requirements of a nuclear facility. Key to our success in both civil and naval nuclear power is our ability to acquire and maintain the high standards required to design and build nuclear coded pumps.
Our three coded facilities - Glasgow-UK, Annecy-France and Houston, TX-USA, are all qualified to ASME “N Stamp” and/or RCC-M and boast a long history of excellence.
The CUP-TWL is a unique solution for turbine driven safety related duties in nuclear power plants. Capable of being engineered to match a broad range of system requirements, it consumes less physical space than separate turbine/pump configurations. Functioning as a turbine driven auxiliary feed water pump in a pressurized water reactor system and as part of the reactor core isolation cooling system in a boiling water reactor, the CUP-TWL provides a reliable decay heat removal capability.
It can operate without external services, so it has the ability to run for extended periods under a loss of external and/or back-up power to a reactor site. The CUP-TWL is one of the few proven technologies that can currently meet the demanding requirements of a station black out scenario, offering both existing and new sites a solution to improve the safety and integrity of their plant.
ClydeUnion Pumps offers the following:
- Dedicated nuclear design department
- In-house seismic, environmental and operability qualification
- Qualification tests under accidental conditions: thermal transients, debris and seismic tests
- Commitment to quality
- ASME ‘N’, ‘NPT’ and ‘NS’
- 10CFR50 Appendix B Program
- RCC-M
- Large, innovative, in-house research and development facilities
- Comprehensive in-house software and analytical capability
Pressurized Water Reactor
During a station blackout (SBO), the continued, reliable operation of auxiliary feedwater (AFW) pumps is vital to nuclear plant safety. The Turbine Water Lubricated (TWLTM) Pump is a combined centrifugal pump and turbine designed specifically for nuclear safety applications. It requires no external power or additional support systems to provide continued, remote operation during prolonged periods of power outage.
Steam-driven, it provides reliable pumping of water from the emergency feedwater storage tank to the steam generators for core heat removal in the event that the main feedwater system is unavailable.
There are many benefits of installing a TWLTM Pump including:
- Extended SBO AFW operation—no electrical power required, so is not dependent on station batteries or manual operation
- Easier maintenance than a traditional pump and turbine arrangement with fewer components and compact design, enabling easier accessibility
- Proven, reliable operation
- Reduced fire risk due to no oil requirement
- Discharge head, flow rates, and required steam conditions meet or exceed existing pressurised water reactor (PWR) installation requirements
- It is approximately half the size of traditional pump/turbine arrangements and provides a compact, light pumping solution that is easy to
- retrofit and more easily accessible for simplified maintenance.
- It has fewer parts than systems that use separate turbines, pumps, and couplings, and has a design that should offer improved reliability, better performance, and easier maintenance.
- With no need for any electrical power, it is designed to extend SBO coping duration beyond the capabilities of existing turbine-driven pump sets in nuclear power plants.
- Can run and start-up under completely flooded conditions
- Designed to withstand seismic events
- No drive couplings and no alignment issues
- Eliminates failure modes such as those identified in NUREG reports:
- Water lubricated bearings ensure reliable operation without the need for oil systems
- Self-contained governor and controls require no external services
- No potential leak paths as the shaft does not penetrate the casing and there are no mechanical seals between pumped fluid and the atmosphere
- Rapid hot or cold start-up
- No overshoot beyond running speed
- Accommodates water slugs both at start-up and during normal operation with no detrimental impact to equipment
- Compact design
The TWL™ has a single casing design with no shaft protrusions, enabling it to start and operate while fully submerged. Extensive testing at our Glasgow facility has shown that it will maintain safety performance and continue to operate with no adverse effects or detrimental changes to performance for a minimum of eight hours. During this time, the pump can be started and stopped, again with no detriment to its performance.
Nuclear Valves
Copes Vulcan valves have been engineered and manufactured for the nuclear industry for over forty years, proudly producing globe, gate, swing check, butterfly, ball and sampling valves for our nuclear customers. We provide technical solutions for a variety of nuclear applications including feedwater, steam dump, pressurizer spray, reactor coolant, sampling, service water, and safety injection valves.
The Copes-Vulcan manufacturing facility in Houston, TX holds 'N', 'NPT', and 'NR' certification and is certified by ASME to manufacture valves and components to the Boiler and Pressure Vesssel Code.
Copes-Vulcan valves are manufactured for boiling water reactors (BWR), heavy water reactors (CANDU) and pressurized water reactors (PWR), and are supplied to many countries including the United States, Canada, Mexico, South Korea, China, Japan, Switzerland, Brazil and many more.
Typical nuclear product applications include:
- Feedwater (Start-up, Main)
- Atmospheric Dump
- Sampling
- High Pressure Safety Injection
- Reactor Coolant
- Service Water (RHR)
- 3-Way Diverting and Converting
- Closed Cooling Water
- Heater Drains
We also have a specialist team of field service technicians who provide technical support to our customers, and have been actively providing refurbishments and upgrades of existing equipment to help the utilities to reduce their maintenance costs and support power uprates.
We offer a wide range of services including:
- Refurbishment of existing valve components and assemblies to extend the life of the OEM equipment.
- Upgrade and modernization of original equipment
- Replacing threaded trim with quick change trim
- Configuration/material changes to resolve potential operational issues due to changes in operating temperatures, pressures or flow rates
Our product range has been developed in response to the specific needs of our nuclear customers and comprises a variety of globe valves for standard to severe duty valve applications. With one of the largest selections of control valve trims available in the nuclear market, Copes-Vulcan valve designs can meet our customers' demanding requirements and conditions.
Containment Sampling Isolation valves are custom designed for the nuclear industry providing FCI 70-2 Class V shutoff, with excellent performance in high differential pressure applications. The valve was designed, built and tested in accordance with ASME Boiler and Pressure Vessel Code Section III for Classes 1, 2 or 3. ANSI B16.34 valves are also available.
Also available are high performance, reliable butterfly, ball, gate and check valves designed and customized for the nuclear industry.
