At the end of last year Rosatom laid a course for speeding up the replacement capacities construction. The work at the Leningrad NPP is going full pace. At the end of 2012 the heart of the future station was delivered at the site – the power unit 1 reactor vessel. Today the concrete pouring of the outer reactor containment vessel has been conducted, the inner structural units are under construction. The station meant to replace the Kursk NPP is about to be constructed. The specialists conducted some engineering surveys, looking for strategic site for the future Kursk-2 NPP. The site for building will be picked out by the second quarter of 2013.

Smolensk NPP will be in need of replacement capacity not earlier than 2020-ies. Power unit 1 went through reconstruction and modernization, was examined by the IAEA international experts, who conformed its high safety. At the end of 2012 the Federal Service of Ecological, Technological and Nuclear Supervision prolonged the operation term of the unit up to 2020. However the preparation for the Smolensk-2 NPP building is not laid on a shelf. In the beginning of the year the General Designer was appointed – Atomenergoproyekt (Moscow), Rosatom engineering Company.

This choice is not accidental, since it was Atomenergoproyekt which produced the general design of the Smolensk NPP, which means that the site is very well known to the company specialists. “The personnel of Desnogorsk planning and surveying branch of Atomenergoproyekt are currently working on site, they are ready to fulfill the task in due time” – said Marat Mustafin, the Atomenergoproyekt General Director. Besides Atomenergoproyekt is also the creator and realization expert of the WWER-TOI reactor, which is planned to be used at the new NPP. Today there are three blocks under operation at the Smolensk NPP, with carbon-uranium reactors LWGR with the capacity of 1000 MW each. According to the plan, its successor will consist of two units with WWER-1200 reactors.