POWER March 2016 - 8

Belo Monte Hydro Plant
Stunned, Revived Again
Legal battles to stall the 11-GW Belo Monte
hydroelectric dam-being built on the
Xingu River in Amazon forest for one of
the world's largest power plants-are raging
on in Brazil (Figure 1).
In January, just weeks before the
mammoth plant was due to test its first
turbines, a judge in the federal court in
Altamira, a city in Brazil's northern state
of Pará, suspended the dam's license and
levied a $226,000 fine against its owner,
Norte Energia-a consortium of 18 partners
that includes parastatal power utility
Eletrobrás and its subsidiary Eletronorte.
The consortium failed to support a plan to
protect affected indigenous Indian groups,
the court ruled. Later that month, however,
a higher federal court revoked the
injunction, though no reason was made
public. Reuters reported the injunction
had been lifted based on a tweet from
Brazil's Energy Ministry on January 27.
The project, which will feature 20 Francis
turbines along with seven supplemental
bulb turbines, has been fraught with
troubles since it was proposed in 1975.
Reports suggest that the project's output
will be much less than planned because
its original reservoir has been greatly reduced
at the request of native groups and
environmentalists. Meanwhile, it has seen
crippling delays owing to frequent protests
since the government granted environmental
approval for the project in February
2010, including the much-publicized
occupation of one of the dam's construction
sites by local tribes and other opponents
in 2012. The dam is now expected
to be fully operational by 2019.
1. Dammed. The 11.2-GW Belo Monte
hydropower project under construction on the
Xingu River in Brazil has been in the midst of
ongoing legal battles. This photo was taken at
the project site in June 2015. Courtesy: Naiara
Pontes/Secretaria-Geral da Presidência da
República
Though afflicted by drought, Brazil is
facing critical power shortages, and its
government is pushing on with the project-and
other controversial projects in
the Amazon. Later this year, it will consider
approving a series of two or more
hydro plants on the Tapajos River.
South Korean Grid
Connects World's First
APR1400 Nuclear Reactor
The world's first 1,400-MW Advanced Pressurized
Reactor (APR1400), a South Korean
Generation III design, has now been
connected to the grid.
Nearly eight years since construction
kicked off in October 2008-despite years
of delays posed by delivery delays and a
crippling documentation scandal that required
cabling replacements-Korea Hydro
and Nuclear Power Co. (KHNP) put Shin
Kori 3 (Figure 2) online on January 15. A
twin reactor at Shin Kori 4 is expected to
start up in 2017.
Meanwhile, two more APR1400s are under
construction at Shin Hanul (Units 1
and 2) and should come online between
April 2017 and February 2018.
According to state-owned KHNP, the
APR1400 evolved from the " well-proven "
OPR1000 Korean Standard Nuclear Power
Plant design, taking just 10 years and
234.6 billion won ($193 million) to develop.
The advanced design incorporates a
number of modifications and improvements
to meet the utility's needs for " enhanced
safety and economic goals and to address
the new licensing issues such as mitigation
of severe accidents. " KHNP also noted
that the APR1400 has been developed to
meet 43 basic design requirements, such
as 4,000 MW rated thermal power, a 60year
lifetime, and lower probabilities of
core damage and accidental radiation re2.
First rate. Korea Hydro and Nuclear
Power Co. (KHNP) in January put online the
Shin Kori 3 nuclear reactor; Shin Kori 4 is expected
to start up next year. Although many
more APR1400 reactors are under construction,
this is the first one connected to the grid.
Courtesy: KHNP
lease than the country's OPR1000 plants.
The reactor design won the Korean Institute
of Nuclear Safety's design certification
in May 2003. After construction began
on the Shin Kori reactors, KHNP, which is
spearheading efforts to export the design,
struck a $20 billion deal with the United
Arab Emirates for four APR1400s.
Those reactors are already under construction
at Barakah. All are scheduled
to be in operation by 2020. The first is
reportedly more than 75% complete and
is expected to come online in 2017. (For
more on that project, see " Oil- and GasRich
UAE Banks on Nuclear Power " in the
January issue or at powermag.com.)
For KHNP, the grid connection is a tremendous
achievement. Despite delays, the
APR1400 is one of the world's first Generation
III+ reactors to be grid connected. The
company noted that eight Westinghouse
AP1000s and four AREVA EPRs are being
built in the U.S., France, China, and Finland,
" but the construction is being delayed for
at least [one] year to over 10 years. "
In related news, in January, Finnish
utility Teollisuuden Voima Oy, for whom
AREVA is building a 1.6-GW EPR in a
project that is nine years behind schedule
and almost three times over budget,
announced it would submit an operating
license application for Olkiluoto 3 to the
Finnish Ministry of Employment and the
Economy by April. Difficulty in getting approval
for the instrumentation and control
system's design from the Finnish Radiation
& Nuclear Safety Authority is one key
reason for the project's delay.
In China, the containment water tank for
the second Westinghouse AP1000 reactor
under construction at Sanmen in China's
Zhejiang province was installed on December
27. Sanmen 1 is now expected to begin
operating in September 2016, and Sanmen
2 could come online by the end of 2017.
Siemens, GE, MHPSA
Advance Gas Power
Efficiency
Gas power technologies set new benchmarks
over the past few months as gas
turbine " gorillas " Siemens, General Electric
(GE), and Mitsubishi Hitachi Power Systems
Americas (MHPSA) all reported new
achievements.
Another Record-Breaking Siemens HClass
CCGT Plant. In Germany, Siemens on
January 22 turned over a new H-class com8
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POWER March 2016

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