Belarus NPP to start installing new reactor vessel in late 2016


Operations to install the reactor pressure vessel of the first power-generating unit of the Belarusian nuclear power plant will begin in late 2016 at the earliest, Belarusian Energy Minister Uladzimir Patupchyk during the Belarusian Energy and Ecology Forum on Tuesday.

According to the minister, the manufacturer is about to finish testing the reactor pressure vessel. It is supposed to be sent to the construction site in October. The vessel will be used it as part of the first power-generating unit, Patupchyk stressed. Initially this reactor pressure vessel was intended for the second power-generating unit of the Belarusian nuclear power plant.

“We were supposed to start installing the reactor vessel of the first power-generating unit in May 2016. In reality we will be able to start installation operations at the end of the year at the earliest. This is why naturally the construction schedule will be adjusted but we should find reserves in order to compensate for the delays,” news agency BelTA quotes the top official as saying.

As reported earlier, during installation the enclosure of the future reactor fell from the height of 2 – 4 meters at the construction site of the Belarusian NPP in Astravets.

At first, the Belarusian Energy Ministry declined any comment on the situation. The press office group of the company Atomstroyexport, a subsidiary of the Russian state corporation Rosatom and the general contractor at the Belarusian NPP construction, said the information about the reactor’s fall was untrue. Later, however, the Belarusian side confirmed that the ‘emergency situation had occurred in the storage area of the reactor body during its movement in the horizontal plane’.

Then Belarus president Alyaksandr Lukashenka ordered to ‘get rid of the reactor vessel’ if it had suffered ‘the slightest bit of damage’. Rosatom admitted that the incident had taken place but stated that the vessel had not been damaged.

The NPP first power-generating unit is scheduled for commissioning in 2018, the second one – in 2020. The construction of two nuclear reactors is provided in the agreement reached by Belarus and Russia, the reactors being supplied by Atomstroyexport, Russia. The project faced opposition at home and abroad on both safety and political grounds.

belsat.eu

TWITTER