Rosatom will continue negotiations concerning its participation of the Bohunice NPP new unit. Earlier it had been planned to finish the negotiations before the end of June, however, according to the Ministry of Economy of Slovakia, the process was slowed down due to “decrease of electrical energy prices, collapse on the CO2 emissions quota market and discriminating mechanisms of renewable sources generation support, accepted by the EU”. Today at the Bohunice NPP there are three shut down reactors and 2 working power units with the VVER-440 reactors.
The representatives of the “Paks” NPP visited Central Design Bureau for Machine-Building (CKBM, part of Rosatom’s machine-building division). The Hungarian delegation conducted inspection of main circulation pumps soon to be shipped to the NPP for scheduled preventive repair. No deviations were found. The unit pumps produced by the plant are used for recirculation in the reactor system’sheat transport main circuit. Its additional function is cooling down the reactor in case of electric power supply failure.
Highly enriched nuclear fuel of the research reactor in Dalat (Socialist Republic of Vietnam) was repatriated to Russia. Today all HEU is successfully taken from the Vietnamese territory. This important achievement resulted from implementation of long-term parallel programs for repatriation of Russia-flagged and U.S.-flagged research reactor nuclear fuel to the Russian Federation and the USA, respectively. The shipment carried out is unique, since for the first time the container TUK 145/C (Type C package as per the classification of the Regulations for the Safe Transport of Radioactive Material, TS-R-1, IAEA) was used for this purpose. This container is certified for transportation of spent nuclear fuel of research reactors by air.
The TVEL fuel company successfully passed qualification as a supplier of pressure tubes for CANDU reactors. The qualification was conducted by the CANDU specialists with the support of Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL).The positive result achieved after several years of thorough work will enable TVEL, the Fuel Company of Rosatom, to bid for supply of such tubes to customers in Canada, Romania, Argentina, South Korea and Chine, as well as other countries where new CANDU reactors are planned to build.
The members of ETSON (European Technical Safety Organizations Network) visited the Leningrad NPP-2 as a part of their meeting which took place in Saint-Petersburg. The mission of the ETSON member countries is to support national authorities that realize the technical evaluation of nuclear safety issues. The goal of the visit was to demonstrate advanced technologies in Russian reactor-building. The members, radiation and nuclear experts from 12 countries, visited the Leningrad NPP-2 site, took a look at the objects under construction, asked some questions concerning safety and efficiency of the future plant, exchanged opinions about operation.
Ukraine is interested in constructing and operation of NPP together with Russia in the third countries, as said Eduard Stavitsky, the Minister of Energy and Coal Industry of Ukraine, at his meeting with Sergey Kiriyenko. He explained that he was speaking about preparing particular offers of service maintenance of NPPs built on Russian projects in Hungary, Bulgaria, Iran and other countries along with joint engineering service and NPP equipment co-production. The parties also talked about the necessity of energizing the construction work at units 3 and 4of the Khmelnitskiy NPP, organizing its financing according to agreements made, in the first place.
An international student team started its work at the Belarus NPP. 60 students from Russia and Belarus will be working at the construction site in July and August. “This will help young people to acquire the most useful professional and life experience, – said Yuriy Pustovoy, Director for Construction of the Belarus NPP from NIAEP, Rosatom’s engineering company. – It’s great that the team is international so that Russian and Belarusian students could not just work together but become friends and have a good time”.
