The turbine generator stator will be replaced and the rotor refurbished at unit 6 of Bulgaria’s Kozloduy NPP under a contract signed between the plant and Rusatom Service. It also will conduct the maintenance of the turbine-generator runner of the only Bulgarian NPP. The work will raise the turbine generator capacity by 100 MWe to 1100 MWe when implemented in 2014. It is part of a project to update and extend the operating lives of Kozloduy units. The reactors thermal output increase by 104% will provide the country with some additional energy.
The Machine-Building Plant (one of the major producer of fuel for NPPs, part of TVEL) was recently attended by a group of students from Czech Republic whose major is nuclear physics and power. The objective of the visit was to get familiar with the process of nuclear fuel production. The students visited the plant’s Information Center, watched the presentation of the plant and attended the pelletizing and fuel element operating equipment workshops. The Czech delegation is also planning to visit one of the Russia’s NPPs.
The manufacturing of the first copper dummy conductor for ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor) using cable that had been made in Russia, was completed. The cable—composed of superconducting niobium-titanium strands produced by the Chepetsky Mechanical Plant in Glazov, Udmurtia (Russia)—passed the jacketing and compaction stages in Italy. The copper dummy, after spooling, will pass all the tests required by the ITER Organization before shipment to the Efremov Institute in St. Petersburg to be integrated into the PF1 double pancake dummy.
Atomenergomash, a machine building division of Rosatom and NEM Energy b.v., a leading European company in exhaust-heat boiler engineering, are going to develop their partnership in the thermal power sphere. In February in Moscow the parties had a meeting, during which they decided to prolong the license agreement which expires in 2014. The parties also noted the potential of the Russian market of exhaust-heat boilers, the estimated cost of which is more than $2 billion.
A five days seminar dedicated to the problem of safety provision at nuclear facilities and titled “Identification and threat reduction from an internal abuser” was held at the Nuclear Power Information Center in Murmansk. The seminar was attended by the specialists of the Russian nuclear companies along with nuclear safety experts from the US. The participants went through hypothetical situations of nuclear safety violation and trained their prevention and relief skill in case of hazardous condition. Striking the balance of the seminar the participants noted high efficiency of the five days course and expressed some hope for future fruitful cooperation.
Russia and Belarus signed an agreement for cooperation in the nuclear safety sphere. The agreement is aimed to improve nuclear safety infrastructure and safety regulation systems, to develop and refine regulatory framework in the nuclear safety sphere, taking into consideration the requirements of the IAEA safety norms on, and to create a system of crisis centers in Belarus and personnel training. Rosatom is currently building the first NPP in Belarus, which will consist of two units with a total capacity up to 2,400MW. It will be built at the Ostrovets district, Grodno oblast. The first power unit of the Belarusian NPP is planned to be launched in 2018.
