Successful Steam Turbine Modernization at Nuclear Power Station Krümmel in Germany

摘要

KKK Krümmel, Germany, is one of the biggest nuclear power stations in the world using a boiling water reactor. Although the lifetime of the unit was cut to 2016 by Germany's nuclear consensus, a project was started in 2003 to modernize the steam turbine. The target was to improve the plant efficiency and increase the power output by applying newly developed technologies for steam turbines. With the modernization an additional power output of more than 70 MW was reached. This improved the plant efficiency by 2% points without any changes to the thermal cycle. Today, KKK is the most powerful nuclear BWR power station in the world with 1402 MW power output. In addition, the service interval was extended to 12 years which clearly cut the maintenance costs.