The new facility – which includes the upgrade and reopening after 10 years of the production facility for steam generator tubes – increases the company’s capacity by 60%.
Göran Björkman, CEO of Alleima, said: “By upgrading and reopening our tube mill, we strengthen our ability to meet the growing demand within the nuclear segment, both for conventional nuclear power plants and for small modular reactors (SMRs). This is a central part of our strategy and demonstrates that we are a leading supplier of high-technology products based on quality, reliability, and long-standing industry experience.”
Speaking to World Nuclear News, he said they have already delivered some contracts for SMRs and are also involved in research and development with a number of advanced modular reactor developers, featuring different types of technologies – helium, lead, sodium and molten salt.
Carl von Schantz, President of the Tube Division, said that the investment in R&D was important for customers “because if you’re going to build the new generation reactors, the advanced reactors, you need to make sure that you have the right material in the tubes to be able to handle the different cooling methods and the different technologies”.
Von Schantz added: “We have customers from all over the world here in Sandviken. This demonstrates that we have established ourselves as a reliable, stable, and long-term partner, manufacturing world-leading products for extremely demanding environments. We are increasing capacity by around 60% to meet the rapidly growing global demand and our customers, they need capacity and they need to have players like us investing to make sure that we can support their growth. This is a long-term partnership.”
Among companies represented at the inauguration of the facility were Doosan Enerbility, NuScale Power, Rolls-Royce SMR, and Westinghouse.
Alleima – previously named Sandvik Materials Technology – has been involved in the nuclear energy supply chain for more than 60 years. As well as steam generator tubes it also supplies nuclear fuel cladding tubes and other nuclear-grade components. Since 1964 it says it has supplied tube bundles to more than 400 steam generators in more than 20 countries, and more than 60,000,000 metres of nuclear fuel tubes to more than 100 reactors.
