We mark the passing of year 2013 with a sense of satisfaction derived from numerous new accomplishments and milestones for our Company achieved by the diligence and perseverance of our associates here in the U.S. and overseas. We extend our year-end greetings to our clients, our personnel at all eight operation centers, and our suppliers who have helped make 2013 a memorable year of solid achievements for our Company.
We will recall 2013 as the year of great successes for our Company in several of our product lines. Our standing as the technology leader in the field of transport and storage of used nuclear fuel was solidified on August 29, 2013 at the U.S. Army’s Proving Grounds in Aberdeen, Maryland, where the Army’s missile launcher delivered a picture perfect strike to a scaled model of the Holtec designed HI-STAR 180 transport and storage cask (the industry’s highest in heat load and capacity). This missile test was designed to simulate the impact of a crashing aircraft on the HI-STAR 180 transport cask while in use at a spent fuel storage facility. The post-impact inspection of the cask showed that it survived the impact with large performance margins. The HI-STAR 180 met the Swiss regulator’s postimpact leak-tightness criterion by a margin of nearly 1000!
The year 2013 also saw Holtec enter into contracts with some of the world’s most respected nuclear operators in Europe to develop and license an array of new cask designs that would exercise our technical creativity to the maximum extent. Additionally, we were honored to have South Texas Project in the U.S. join the membership of HI-STORM system users. The number of nuclear units served by Holtec’s dry storage/transport technology in the U.S. reached 50 with the worldwide clientele exceeding 70 nuclear units. Wet storage of spent fuel in a high density configuration, invented by Holtec in the late 1980s, further spread worldwide in 2013. Holtec has supplied wet storage racks to some 95 nuclear units in the US and almost one quarter of all operating plants in the world. The number of Holtec supplied storage cells installed in the world’s fuel pools exceeds 175,000 at the time of this writing.
Five new patents on used fuel storage related inventions and one patent on a heat exchanger design were granted by the USPTO to Holtec in 2013. Several confirmatory patents were also issued to Holtec by foreign jurisdictions.
The Site Services Division, responsible for all on-site construction, installation, and pool-to-pad loading services continued its enviable record in safety and dose minimization as well as its quite respectable rate of annual growth. The Site Services Division loaded a total of 41 systems in 2013 with zero safety incidents and continued to achieve low crew dose.
The table below summarizes the total number of Holtec supplied dry storage systems in storage as of the end of 2013.
After a two year slump, the Company’s heat exchange equipment business recovered smartly in 2013 notching several large orders in the US, India, and Korea. The Company delivered over 2,040 items of capital equipment to clients around the world in 2013 of which over 80 percent are based on our own patents.
Over 150 new associates joined the Company’s various operation centers around the globe in 2013. Among the many successes chalked off by our manufacturing facilities is the completion of the first five Double Wall Canisters (DWCs) for Chernobyl. The DWC, as its name implies, provides two independent confinement boundaries to isolate the contents (used nuclear fuel and other high level waste) from the environment. The DWC, in essence, is two independent and unconnected all-welded canisters in conformal contact over their interfacing surfaces. A total of 231 DWCs are scheduled to be fabricated at the Holtec Manufacturing Division (HMD) for our Chernobyl project over the next three years. An additional seven DWCs are entering manufacturing at the Holtec Manufacturing Division for EDF Energy’s Sizewell plant in the UK.
DOE’s decision to pass on our request for SMR-160 development funding assistance nearly a month ago is a bump in the road for our program which has not dampened our drive or commitment to carry on. Convinced that our SMR-160 technology is truly transformative, we are resolved to press on despite the lack of government funding support. We salute the management of PSEG for establishing a partnership in the SMR-160 program with us and for agreeing to leverage their considerable intellectual resources to help improve the operational aspects of our reactor. We are also grateful to SCE&G for its staunch and unwavering support of our SMR-160 program.
Finally, we hope to bring our innovative obround stainless steel tubing for air cooled condensers, developed after 8 years of R&D, to the market in 2014. Power plants in water challenged regions of the world will be the principal beneficiaries of this technology.
In closing, we would like to wish all of our readers a healthy and prosperous New Year.
Reminder, as of January 1, 2014 our mailing address became: Holtec International, One Holtec Drive, Marlton, NJ 08053-3421
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