The Central Design & Technological Institute (JSC CPTI, part of Rosatom’s Fuel Company TVEL) has designed and manufactured a container to transport steam generators from decommissioned NPPs. (TUK PGB) commissioned by the AP Aleksandrov Scientific Research Technological Institute (NITI). The equipment is designed for safe transfer by land and water transport and for long-term storage of used steam generating units. The assembled length of the transport kit is more than 10 metres, width 4.5 metres, and height about seven metres. The total weight without contents is more than 100 tonnes or, with the packaged steam generating unit, more than 290 tonnes. The transport packaging kit has passed all necessary tests, including those simulating emergency situations during transportation. The required licences and certificates have been issued.

Currently, the TUK with the steam generating unit has been delivered to the long-term storage point for reactor compartments in the Sayda-Guba department of the North-Western Centre for Radioactive Waste Management SevRAO of the Federal Environmental Operator.

“The peculiarity of this project was that the inner surface of the container should be filled with lead. It was necessary to achieve uniformity of the lead layer and the absence of voids,” commented Mikhail Tarasov, General Director of CPTI JSC. “But lead decreases in volume as it cools, which is why we had to go through several cycles of melting and adding. This was the most difficult task, but our specialists solved it by developing their own pouring technology.”

CPTI is the centre of competence of the industry integrator for decommissioning nuclear and radiation hazardous facilities and radioactive waste management. The institute’s specialists previously developed a transport packaging set (TUK-166) for the Bilibino NPP, now being decommissioned; an electric propulsion engine test bench for the Troitsk Institute of Innovative & Thermonuclear Research (TRINITI); and an earthquake-resistant transfer machine for nuclear fuel at the Akkuyu NPP in Turkiye.

Image courtesy of Rosatom