A delegation of the Norwegian Radiation Protection Authority (NRPA) visited the Kola NPP. Russia and Norway has been cooperating in improving safety of civil and military nuclear facilities for over 20 years. Since then, Norway has provided nearly 1.5 billion kroner (175 million Euros) as financing of nuclear safety projects related to the maintenance of navy facilities, including decommissioning of four submarines, manufacturing of spent nuclear fuel casks, radioactive waste management and security of radioactive fissile materials. Hundreds of millions were further spent on nuclear safety projects at civil facilities, including Kola and Leningrad nuclear stations and the nuclear icebreaker fleet based in Murmansk.

The bilateral cooperation between the NRPA Institute for Energy Technology (IFE) and the Kola NPP is governed by the Norwegian Government Technical Assistance Program adopted in 1992. A series of safety improvement projects has been carried out since then. Russia and Norway plan to continue their cooperation.

This time NRPA experts inspected the equipment delivered as part of the Technical Assistance Program and discussed efficiency of the joint NPP safety projects.

“In 2014, Norway provided 2.7 million kroner as co-financing of the safety improvement projects at the Kola NPP. This year the financing has been increased to 3.3 million kroner. Our future attention will be focused on staff training,” said Ingar Amundsen, Head of NRPA International Safety Section. He also noted that he personally made sure how efficient the joint Russian-Norwegian projects were.

As earlier reported by Kola NPP Director Vasily Omelchuk, more than 1,400 safety improvement projects have been carried out at the nuclear station, with total safety investments reaching nearly 900 million US dollars. The most recent major project was structural enhancement and seismic resistance improvement of reactor units.