At the end of September the President of Russia Vladimir Putin and the President of Finland Sauli Niinistö took part in inauguration of the Nyagan GRES, one of the major electric power plants of Tyumen energy system and one of the major heat power plants in the world. Construction of the power plant was carried out by the Russian-Finish energy concern Fortum within the framework of its investment program in the Urals and Western Siberia. This project, still quite unique for Russian power energy, was started from green field and is being implemented on a turnkey basis. Nyagan GRES consists of three combined-cycle (CCGT) units built on joint project of Atomenergoproyekt (Saint-Petersburg Scientific and Research and Design – Institute providing engineering, procurement, and construction management services for the construction of nuclear power plants in the Russian Federation and internationally) and GEA Group.
The project suggests three cooling towers with the irrigation area of 4200m², one tower per unit. The region where the station is located is famous for its severe climate conditions, with frosty-cold weather lasting for up to 130 days a year. Following the client’s demand, this was taken into consideration, so the cooling tower project boasts various design solutions, suggesting efficient work of towers during wintertime, such as installing air regulators at the windows: a winter ring pipe, which won’t allow irrigation equipment to freeze, and also special bolt mechanisms on the main pipeline, which will allow closing water supply to each of six zones of the tower irrigation area. The towers equipment is designed by GEA.
After the start up of units 1 and 2 the Nyagan GRES will produce 5,4 billion kWh, of unit 3 – 8,6 billion kWh. The capacity of each unit will be 418 MW, the station total capacity – 1260 MW.
There are several hundreds of cooling towers built for thermal and nuclear power stations by Atomenergoproyekt on the territory of Russian Federation and late USSR. Today there are cooling towers being constructed for the Leningrad and Belarus NPPs.
