Chinese Engineers Training at OSU

Story Posted: Fri, Feb 27, 2009

This spring, China will begin construction of the world’s first Westinghouse AP1000 nuclear power plant. The AP1000 is a third generation reactor design featuring passive safety systems and modular design.

OSU’s Advanced Thermal Hydraulic Research Facility played an integral part in the safety testing and design certification of the AP1000. Now, under a Westinghouse Technology Transfer Agreement, five nuclear engineers from the China Nuclear Power Technology Corporation (SNPTC) are spending the school year training on OSU’s one-quarter scale AP1000 model. They are primarily here to learn safety evaluation methods developed by The Department of Nuclear Engineering and Radiation Health Physics (NERHP) but are also interested in learning the theory that will enable them to collaborate with Westinghouse on design refinements for future AP1000s.

NERHP Professor Qiao Wu is supervising the training of Dr. Yuquan Li, Dr. Shengqian Li, Dr. Haiyan Gu, Dr. Dongjian Zhao, and Dr. Donghua Lu. In November, Professor Wu also hosted eight managers from the SNPTC who spent two days in Corvallis touring the APEX facility and hearing progress reports on the $500,000 training program.

The five visiting engineers have been gracious guests, participating in the OSU experience by living in a dorm and attending NERHP events like a recent student recognition dinner. Says Dr. Li, “Corvallis is a beautiful place. OSU has nice professors and nice people.”

Professor Wu hopes the strong relationship between NERHP and SNPTC will enable OSU students to intern at the new APEX plant in China in the near future. He notes, “China has an ambitious plan to rapidly deploy nuclear power.” In fact, the SNPTC has contracted to build four AP1000s and there are five other nuclear power plants under construction.

The AP1000 is also the technology of choice for twelve new plants approved for construction in the United States.