Reactors installed on floating plant

Tuesday, 1 October 2013

The two reactors for the first floating nuclear power plant being built in Russia have been installed in the vessel's hull, marking a major milestone in the plant's construction.

The first steam generating unit - comprising the reactor, steam generators and pressurizer - is lowered into the vessel's reactor compartment (Image: Rosenergoatom)

The first 220-tonne steam generating unit - including a 35 MWe KLT-40S reactor - was installed in the vessel's reactor compartment on 27 September at the Baltiysky Zavod-Shipbuilding shipyard in St Petersburg. The second one was installed today. The operation to install the reactors, carried out using a special floating crane, was held in the presence of Rosenergoatom and the Russian Maritime Register of Shipping.

Russia's OKBM Afrikantov completed the assembly of the two reactors for the country's first floating nuclear power plant, the Akademik Lomonosov, in 2009. The assembly and acceptance testing of the reactors was conducted at the Nizhniy Novgorod AtomEnergoProekt (NN-AEP). OKBM Afrikantov designed and provided technical support for the manufacture of the reactors, while Izhorskiye Zavody produced the reactor vessels and NN-AEP manufactured parts for the reactors and assembled them. They have been stored at Baltiysky Zavod while the hull of the vessel was completed.

Deputy general director of Rosenergoatom's directorate for building floating nuclear power plants Sergey Zavyalov commented, "We, as the customer, can see that work on the project has intensified in the past months, which gives us strong confidence that the floating unit will be ready in time."

The keel of the Akademik Lomonosov was laid in April 2007 at Sevmash in Severodvinsk, but the project was subsequently transferred to the Baltiysky Zavod. The 21,500 tonne hull was launched in 2010, although construction work was frozen in mid-2011 amid bankruptcy proceedings against the shipyard. The company was subsequently acquired by state-owned United Shipbuilding Corporation and Rosenergoatom signed a new contract in December 2012 with Baltiysky Zavod shipyard for the completion of the first floating nuclear power plant.

The plant is now scheduled for delivery on 9 September 2016 and will be deployed near the port of Pevek on Russia's Chukotka peninsula on the East Siberian Sea.

Researched and written
by World Nuclear News