France's Areva group said today that it had inaugurated the world's largest test centre for boiling water reactors (BWRs) - INKA (Integral Teststand Karlstein) - at the group's Karlstein site in Bavaria, Germany.
INKA was inaugurated on 27 May 2009 and will allow Areva to test the passive safety systems of BWRs.
International research institutes represented at the centre will include Germany's Dresden Research centre and Switzerland's Paul Scherrer Institute, where they will supply and manage the new, highly-sophisticated measuring instruments.
Areva and E.ON said last year that they had agreed to collaborate on developing Areva’s third generation BWR, known as the SWR, with an electric generating capacity in the range of 1,200 megawatts. E.ON said it aims to use this model “above all” for its new power stations with an electricity-generating capacity in the intermediate capacity range.
