Essay Example on UAE Nuclear Plant: 5600MW Source of Energy for the UAE

The United Arab Emirates has gone out of its way to developing the first ever nuclear plant in the UAE. The power plant is expected to produce approximately 5600MW of power and will be a major source of energy in the UAE once the project has been completed. (Al, 2015). The project is located about 53km from Ruwais in the east-south west region. Ideally, the main contractors were the Emirates Nuclear Energy Corporation and the Korea Electric Power Corporation. This paper thus seeks to further elucidate the details of these projects.

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Project costing approximately $32 billion hosted a groundbreaking ceremony in 2011 whereby the construction of four units of 1400MW each would commence in 2012. In 2012, July, construction begun with 1 unit of the proposed four units. This was after the reception of the construction approval license from the Federal Authority of Nuclear Regulation. Similarly, environmental approval was issued by the Environmental Agency in Abu Dhabi (Al, 2015).

The construction of unit 1 or phase 1 took six years and was completed in 2018. Other construction works such as concrete works and much of the heavy lifting for the other three units were also completed by 2018 in November and are thus expected to be operational by 2020. When fully commissioned, the projected is estimated to meet up to a quarter of the nation's energy needs specifically electricity needs. Despite the advantages of the increased source of energy for the people of UAE, the project is set to produce a whopping 21 million tonnes of toxic and dangerous greenhouses gases each year. Aside from this, the plant shall be operated by Nawah Energy Company which is the combined efforts of KEPCO and ENEC (Al, 2015).

The plant will be operated by Nawah Energy Company, a joint venture between ENEC and KEPCO.

Further research indicates that the power plant is set to be added an APR1400 nuclear reactor technology. The APR1400 was developed by the Korean industry during the leadership of KEPCO and would facilitate the working of the plant. Additionally, the reactor design shall be based on an 80+ system design that has been approved by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission based in the United States. For safety, the reactor has been licensed and approved by the Korean nuclear safety regulator and is expected to have a lifespan of 60 years.

The 1400 MW power reactor represents an advanced version of a pressurised water nuclear reactor which had been constructed by the KEPC. The reactor is an upgraded and improved version of OPR1000, the first of its kind to have been constructed in Korea (Al, 2015).

The APR1400, a Generation-III+ reactor, contains cutting-edge features, for example, the direct vessel injection, a passive flow device for regulation within the safety tank, in-containment an intact refuelling water system, and systems to mitigate dangers in case of unforeseen and foreseen accidents.

The steam generators in the reactor shall transfer heat at a rate of 4000 MW into the secondary system from the coolant system. The steam produced by the secondary system shall be used to drive the power generator producing approximately 1400 MW of electricity (Al, 2015). The reactors have been built in a manner to suit the climatic conditions of UAE which are most often hot and dry. To withstand the hot climatic conditions, they have been fitted with proper ventilation, seawater intake systems, larger pumps as well as plant cooling mechanisms.

References

Al Saadi, S., & Yi, Y. (2015). Dry storage of spent nuclear fuel in UAE-Economic aspect. Annals of Nuclear Energy, 75, 527-535.