Alexei Bannik, ASE’s director for Chinese projects, said that the fuel loading is a crucial step in the nuclear construction process. “To obtain a fuel loading permit, there is a set of measures to be taken first. One of them is to organize proper staff training. This is what we use a full-scale control room simulator for. It provides true-to-life conditions to practice the process of taking the reactor critical, raising and lowering the unit capacity, reactor shut-down and emergency actions of the staff,” he noted.

Gidropress (a part of Rosatom’s nuclear engineering division) has successfully tested the dummy assemblies to be loaded in the imitation reactor core at Units 3 and 4 of Tianwan NPP. Units 3 and 4 are scheduled for commissioning in February 2018 and December 2018 respectively.

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin called for an extension of Russian-Chinese nuclear cooperation, now anchored in the nuclear construction, to research activities. “Rosatom has a large contract portfolio. The two units at Tianwan have already operated for eight years and proved to be reliable. Now we are working on two more units, and I believe this is not the limit,” Vladimir Putin said.