AREVA Inc., the US entity of the AREVA group, leading global supplier to the nuclear industry, and ETRANCO Inc., an international probabilistic risk assessment consulting firm, signed a cooperative alliance agreement to help utility customers comply with new US orders and recommendations as a result of post-Fukushima reviews.
“As the industry responds to Fukushima lessons learned, enhanced mitigation against major hazards such as seismic and flooding are necessary to further ensure the safety and integrity of nuclear plants,” said Mike Rencheck, Chief Operating Officer, AREVA Inc. “We look forward to partnering with ETRANCO in delivering solutions to our customers to provide them with the kind of expertise and service they need to ensure continued safe and reliable operation of their reactors.”
The agreement is part of the global Safety Alliance program AREVA deployed, through which it provides a range of products, services and solutions such as safety analysis, safety upgrades and safety procedures to help utilities worldwide demonstrate and upgrade the safety of their nuclear plant fleets.
This new agreement combines the expertise and experience from both groups' global engineering teams and will provide integrated solutions from planning to implementation. These solutions will help customers resolve regulatory and technical issues related to external event risks -- including potential dual events -- by delivering critical assessments capabilities to enhance the safety and security of the U.S. nuclear fleet that will address such challenges as:
ETRANCO, Inc., founded by Gene Hughes in 2005, is a company providing risk assessment and risk applications to the nuclear industry worldwide. The company is especially active in regulatory compliance issues and areas in which traditional design and Probabilistic Risk Assessment (PRA) applications come together. The company has been heavily engaged in new build PRA design certification applications and Combined Operating License (COL) support for three different designs. The company has also been heavily engaged in development and implementation of design reliability assurance programs (D-RAP) for applicants and the industry. ETRANCO has provided support to operating plants including development of PRA studies to comply with NFPA-805 (Performance-Based Standard for Fire Protection for Light Water Reactor Electric Generating Plants). International work includes projects in Japan, France, Austria, and Brazil.
