Rosenergoatom has completed a RUB2.6 billion ($80 million) programme of measures to reduce consequences of hypothetical beyond design basis accidents at its nuclear power plants. Work has included installing mobile diesel generators and pumps.
“In total, 66 mobile diesel generators, 35 mobile pumping stations and 80 monoblock pumps were supplied to all Russia’s NPPs,” the Russian operator said in a 11 July statement.
In the spring of 2011, Rosenergoatom set up task forces to analyse and prepare lists of possible accident development scenarios at NPPs in Russia, along with response measures that would mitigate the impact of beyond design basis accidents on the population and the environment.
The final task force report included a list of equipment to be procured for Russian NPPs. “This equipment was intended to improve the plants stability to extreme impacts,” Rosenergoatom said.
It included:
Mobile diesel generators as back-up power supply sources for NPP safety and safety related systems (e.g. pumps, valves, local shutdown panels, instrumentation and control, lighting system etc) under beyond design basis accidents.
Mobile pumping stations and monoblock pumps designed to supply cooling water from back-up sources to main circulation loops of reactor installations, at-reactor spent fuel pools, as well as separate spent nuclear fuel storage facilities.
Russia also aims to install seismic protection systems at its nuclear power plants.
Seismic protection systems have already been installed at most plants; they are in trial operation at Novovoronezh, Kola and Kursk and are due to be installed at Bilibino, Leningrad and Smolensk during 2013-2014, according to a Rosenergoatom presentation made at the Atomexpo Forum in Moscow in June.
