Some time ago Russia and the RSA signed a number of documents including declaration of strategic partnership and a nuclear cooperation agreement. According to the RF President, Vladimir Putin, our country is ready to provide the RSA with technical and financial support in nuclear construction. “Russia offers not just help in construction of separate blocks, but in establishing advanced nuclear industry in the country – from raw materials extraction, building NPPs and research reactors to designing and producing nuclear equipment”, – said the head of the RF after negotiations in Durban in March 2013.
Today Rosatom is doing preliminary work with the South-African side in order to understand better the approach to nuclear industry development and the country’s plans and to arrange some particular joint projects. One of the major parts of this is South-African specialists’ visits to Russian atomic sites.
A trip to Volgodonsk
The first thing the visitors from the RSA were interested in was machine-building complex. “Today Russia’s capabilities in NPP construction are drawing more and more attention abroad. The RSA delegation visits to our machine-building enterprises will clearly demonstrate the modern technologies and our readiness for cooperation”, – says Nikolay Drozdov, Director of International Business Department of Rosatom.
The delegation went to the Volgodonsk branch of AEM-technologies (one of the major companies in Russia in the field of power engineering, part of Atomenergomash). During the visit the AEM-technologies General Director Evgeny Pakermanov made a presentation about the Volgodonsk branch and answered questions. The engineers from the delegation got acquainted with production capacities of the plant. The members visited production section 1, where NPP equipment, such as reactor tanks, steam generators PGV-1000M and thermopress machines is produced. Benedict Martins marked production capacities of the Volgodonsk department very high.
The foreign guests also wanted to see how the technologies were performed in the field environment, for this they decided to visit the Rostov NPP site near Volgodonsk. There they had a guided tour, during which they also got familiar with Rosatom production system (RPS). This is a wide-scale departamental project meant to increase productivity and reduce expenses; as its base it has advanced industrial engineering system and scientific organization of production and management. Besides, it includes the best achievements and instruments of other modern systems, adapted for the industry. The main RPS principle is to provide consumer with the product within the shortest period of time and with least possible expenses, with all that the product should be of the highest quality. The RSA representatives got acquainted with one of the sub-projects – the Multi-D technology in engineering and construction of NPP.
Colleagues were impressed
The RSA delegation also visited TVEL’s Machine Building Plant (MSZ) in the town of Electrostal, Moscow region – one of the country’s major industrial enterprises, one of the leading world producers and suppliers of nuclear fuel for NPPs. Besides that the enterprise produces fuel for research reactors and reactor systems for navy.
During the visit the delegation met with the heads of TVEL and MSZ, saw the enterprise presentation and production sections of the plant, where the members were demonstrated the latest achievements in nuclear fuel fabrication – renewed tableting sections, sections of heating units and fuel bundle assembling for NPPs of Russian and foreign design. “We had heard before that the production in Russia is of a very high level, so we decided to come here and see everything with our own eyes. Today we’ve got familiar with your plants, have seen your highly advanced technologies applied. Yes, the level is very high indeed. We are impressed” – noted Benedict Martins.
According to Mr. Martins, atomic energy, for now taking only 5% of the total amount in the country, keeps developing. Thus the national power strategy suggests that by 2030 there will be several new NPPs with the total capacity of 9,6 GW built in the RSA, thus increasing the nuclear part in the country’s energy balance up to 25%. Today there is just one NPP functioning on the RSA territory – Koeberg NPP, belonging to ESKOM.
