Westinghouse Awarded Contract to Provide Reactor Vessel Heads and Related Services to Beznau Nuclear Power Plant in Switzerland

PITTSBURGH, Sept. 21, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Westinghouse Electric Company today announced that it has been awarded a contract valued at 35 million dollars to install replacement reactor vessel (RV) heads and to provide associated services for Axpo AG's Beznau nuclear power plant, a 730 MWe two-unit nuclear plant equipped with Westinghouse pressurized water reactors and located in Dottingen, Switzerland. The installations are scheduled to occur during the plant's 2014 spring (Unit 1) and fall (Unit 2) outages. Preliminary work is under way.

In 2009, Westinghouse was awarded the contract for delivery of the RV heads to Beznau Units 1 and 2. This new contract covers the RV head installation.

Under contract terms, Westinghouse will create a temporary opening in each unit's concrete and steel containment using plasma cutting. The old heads will be removed from the reactor vessels and transferred from containment into the on-site radioactive waste intermediate storage building. The new heads then will be installed. The removal and installation are expected to be completed in fewer than 40 days per unit.

"We are eager to bring our unique expertise at performing large installations to bear for the Beznau plant," said Jimmy Morgan, vice president, Westinghouse Installation and Modification Services. "That expertise has been honed through numerous, global installations of not only reactor vessel heads, but also other major components, such as steam generators and feedwater heaters."

"We applaud Axpo's decision to proactively replace the heads, based on the experience of similar, structurally identical nuclear power plant components," said Norbert Haspel, Westinghouse vice president and managing director, Central Europe. "We are so very pleased that this valued customer continues to rely on us to keep the Beznau plant -- the first pressurized water reactors in Switzerland -- operating safely and efficiently."

In addition to the RV head delivery and installation contracts, Axpo awarded Westinghouse two other major contracts recently: the Autanove (AUTArke NOtstromVErsorgung) contract for the provision of two new emergency power buildings with related emergency power systems and the NEXIS (New EXtended Information System) contract for installation of new plant computers, also scheduled to be completed during the 2014 extended outages at Beznau.

Westinghouse Electric Company, a group company of Toshiba Corporation (TKY:6502), is the world's pioneering nuclear energy company and is a leading supplier of nuclear plant products and technologies to utilities throughout the world. Westinghouse supplied the world's first pressurized water reactor in 1957 in Shippingport, Pa. Today, Westinghouse technology is the basis for approximately one-half of the world's operating nuclear plants, including 60 percent of those in the United States.

www.westinghousenuclear.com

SOURCE Westinghouse Electric Company