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round up
NEW BUILD AT RUSSIA’S KURSK-II NPP the foundation for installation of a turbine has been commissioned in the turbine building of unit 1. The foundation is both a building structure and a part of the turbine unit, since, along with the shafting, it will combine the turbine and the turbogenerator into a single machine. At 1255MW Kursk-II will have the most powerful domestic low-speed turbine in Russia.
WORK HAS BEGUN on the pre-assembly of the outer containment dome at the construction site of Rooppur NPP unit 1 in Bangladesh. Assembly work and subsequent construction and concreting are being carried out by specialists of Trest RosSEM (part of the Engineering Division of Rosatom).
PLANT OPERATION CZECH POWER COMPANY received a permit for further operation of unit 2 of the Temelín NPP from the State Office for Nuclear Safety. The permit was issued for an indefinite period. Two years 1 and all the units of the Dukovany NPP.
EDF IS CONTINUING its inspection programme of NPPs and is preparing to repair sections of pipes affected by stress corrosion. At this stage, EDF considers that it is not necessary to schedule new reactor outages or update its nuclear output estimate. Currently, 12 reactors are shut down and are being inspected for stress corrosion cracking.
UPGRADES CANDU ENERGY, PART of Canada’s SNC-Lavalin Group, has been chosen by Romanian nuclear utility Nuclearelectrica, operator of the Cernavoda NPP, to conduct optimisation work on the unit 1 Candu. SNC-Lavalin will perform axial channel shifting for several fuel channels in unit 1 over three years.
CANADA’S BRUCE POWER and Sargent & Lundy have signed a multi-year agreement for project services. Sargent & Lundy will support all project controls and project management on the Bruce Power site, including Major Component Replacement (MCR) and asset management. Comtech Group will provide project controls support to Sargent & Lundy.
NuScale moves on with SMR deal
United States Trade and Development Agency
(USTDA) awarded a grant to Nuclearelectrica in early 2021 for a study to identify sites where existing coal-fired power plants could be replaced with SMRs. The study, by US firm Sargent & Lundy, identified several potential suitable sites, including Doicesti, owned by Nova Power & Gas, E-Infra Holding. Nuclearelectrica, NuScale & E-Infra signed another MOU to explore deployment of NuScale’s SMR technology at the former Doicesti coal-fired power plant in Dambovita County. The companies will conduct engineering studies, technical reviews, and licensing and permitting activities at the site. Specifically, the MOU outlines the next significant milestones for Nuclearelectrica and NuScale to develop baseload power technology at Doicesti with the aim of deploying a NuScale 6-module plant at the site this decade. NuScale said its SMR simulator, being set
Above: Nuscale has signed an MOU on SMR development in Romania Photo credit: Nuscale
US-based NuScale Power has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Romania’s state nuclear power corporation, SN Nuclearelectrica, to conduct engineering studies, technical reviews, and licensing and permitting activities at a site in Doicesti, that is the preferred location for the deployment of the first NuScale VOYGR power plant. It followed a teaming agreement signed in 2021, under which NuScale and Nuclearelectrica looked at deploying a first NuScale VOYGR-6 (6-module), 462MWe, power plant in Romania.
Russia Plans for 16 new nuclear units Russia’s government has set a goal of bringing the nuclear share of its total energy balance up to 25% by 2045. A large-scale construction programme will be launched in parallel with the decommissioning of RBMK reactors. Russia currently operates eight RBMK units – three each at Kursk and Smolensk NPPs and two at Leningrad NPP. Two units at Leningrad (1&2) were closed in 2018 and 2020 and one at Kursk (unit 1) in 2021. By 2027, Russia also plans to close units 3&4 at Leningrad and unit 2 at Kursk. At the end of 2021, nuclear’s share of Russia’s
8 | June 2022 |
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up in collaboration with the US and Romanian governments, will be installed at the University Politehnica of Bucharest to support workforce capacity building. It will be the first outside the USA and the fourth in total. Earlier, NuScale signed an agreement with South Korea’s Doosan Enerbility to begin production of forging materials for NuScale’s SMRs this year, with expectations for full-scale equipment manufacturing by the latter half of 2023. Specifically, Doosan, a Korean industrials and energy company, will begin production of forging dies for NuScale’s Upper Reactor Pressure Vessel, marking the start of NuScale Power Module (NPM) production. NuScale Power has also recently signed
an MOU with its partners, Samsung C&T Corporation, Doosan Enerbility Co, and GS Energy Corporation to explore the deployment of NuScale’s VOYGR power plants. NuScale said this is a critical next step in bringing NuScale’s energy solution to Asia. ■
total energy balance was 19.7%. Alexander Shutikov, First Deputy General
Director of Rosenergoatom for NPP operation said that in the late 1990s and early 2000s, work began on life extension of the first units. In 2007, Rosenergoatom launched a
programme to increase generation to compensate for a possible shortage of electricity due to delays in the start-up of new units. The thermal power of VVERs was increased as well as the efficiency of the VVER and RBMK turbine units. VVER-1000s were transferred to an 18-month fuel cycle, and optimised preventive maintenance was U
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