Episode 1 – Japan
Tokyo
A new milestone was reached in the development of Onet Technologies’ (OT) activities in Japan with the arrival of Julien Guillemin in Tokyo in late 2020. Encouraged by the successes of the previous years and the desire to implement a long-term vision in Japan, OT decided it was time for a permanent local representative.
Julien’s mission is one of business development: he will strive to renew our order book with our three current partners (the METI, JAEA and TEPCO); win fresh bids on other sites or with new customers; and prepare for the future of our activities by creating a business plan and determining the best option for securing a lasting foothold in Japan, e.g. by opening a local subsidiary.
The main focus for now is to leverage our activities in waste management and decommissioning/dismantling for our expansion. We are already involved in the challenges that the decommissioning and dismantling of the Fukushima NPP represent, and the Japanese market for these two main fields is vast and opens more and more, making it worthy of an in-depth exploration.
Finally, EPM is the American nuclear engineering subsidiary of OT. It is specialized in safety and having Julien as a local representative also helps its development in Japan.
Kobe
With Julien’s arrival, the number of OT employees living in Japan now totals two, with a third following in their footsteps soon. Florent Roulet has been living in Kobe since August 2012 and will be joined there, as soon as the restrictions on immigration due to the pandemic are lifted, by Alan Lesmarie.
Florent and Alan play a key role in Kobe: their mission is to ensure the regulatory compliance of the nuclear pressure equipment designed and produced by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) in partnership with Onet Technologies for EDF’s reactors (the French electric utility company).
There are three ongoing projects:
- Replacement steam generators,
- Elbows and straight pipes for the 900 MWe primary system
- Piping for the primary system equipped with RIS connectors (safety injection for the primary system).
The partnership between MHI and OT on this market will soon celebrate its 20th birthday and may well last a while longer since a contract was signed in 2019 for the delivery of 3 replacement steam generator triplets.
Projects
Onet Technologies is now involved in the decommissioning activities of the Fukushima Daiichi power plant through three contracts.
These are centered on 3 strategic themes, all of them revolving around the retrieval of the corium generated by the meltdown of the nuclear reactor cores during the March 2011 accident:
- For the METI: Development of corium-tailored laser-cutting technologies, including the capture and filtration of the dust particles and aerosols generated by the cutting activities. It is an absolutely essential safety challenge and the results of this project are highly anticipated by the Japanese stakeholders.
- For JAEA: Study of the aerosols generated when cutting corium (mechanical or thermal cutting). The objective is to increase understanding and planning of on-site operations and more specifically the mitigation procedures for accidental scenarios, i.e. avoiding that such aerosols could contaminate the environment. The ongoing project involved tests on a radioactive corium surrogate, a material designed to simulate the properties of actual corium and therefore containing its main compound, uranium.
- For TEPCO: Study of sorting and storage scenarios for the waste generated during the reactors’ dismantling activities. This includes considerations on the sorting technologies (measurements), the criteria to apply and the storage options.
Several customers are involved in these projects:
METI : Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. It is tasked, through the Agency for Natural Resources and Energy (ANRE), with funding R&D projects for the decommissioning and dismantling of the Fukushima Daiichi NPP.
JAEA : Japan Atomic Energy Agency. Its missions include nuclear R&D, in particular as regards the safety aspects. JAEA is also the operator of several fuel cycle and research facilities as well as prototype reactors. It is a key player for the R&D aspects of Fukushima Daiichi’s decommissioning and also manages its own internal projects.
TEPCO: Tokyo Electric Power Company is one of about a dozen electricity producers and nuclear power plant operators in Japan. It is the owner of the Fukushima Daiichi NPP and the entity tasked with decommissioning and dismantling it. Since April 2020, a dedicated subsidiary created specifically for this challenging task has been implemented on site, from where it manages most of the projects.
EPM is now wrapping up an important contract for Westinghouse, providing support for probabilistic safety assessments for the Onagawa 2 NPP.
The goal of this first newsletter was to give our readers a quick overview of our current activities in Japan. Hopefully, future issues will also communicate on new successes for the company!