Installation of first reactor vessel at Belarusian nuclear power plant to begin in late May

The installation of the reactor vessel for the first power-generating unit of the Belarusian nuclear power plant will begin in late May, BelTA learned from Alexander Kanyuka, Head of the Reactor Department of the state enterprise Belarusian Nuclear Power Plant, on 17 February.

The installation of the reactor vessel for the first power-generating unit is tentatively scheduled for 28 May. Preparatory work is now in progress. The equipment has already been delivered to the installation area. The installation, erection and adjustment process is expected to take about two weeks. After that the rest of the equipment will be set up to be “encircled” by the main circulation pipe, said Alexander Kanyuka.

The reactor vessel’s installation is quite a labor-intensive operation. “The vessel is the main part of the reactor unit. The vessel needs to be installed precisely in compliance with the design documents. The safety of consequent operations depends on that,” explained the official.

The reactor vessel was made by the Volgodonsk-based branch Atommash of the Russian company AEM Technologies. It was delivered to the construction site of the Belarusian nuclear power plant in late December 2015. This piece of equipment weighs over 330 tonnes. It is 13 meters high, with the diameter as large as 4.5 meters. The reactor is a vertical cylinder with an elliptical bottom. The reactor core and the internal components will be located inside.

The Belarusian nuclear power plant is a project to build an AES-2006 type nuclear power plant 18km away from Ostrovets, Grodno Oblast. The BelNPP will have two power-generating units with the total output capacity of up to 2,400MW (2x1,200MW). In line with the general contract for building the nuclear power plant the first power-generating unit is scheduled for commissioning in 2018, with the second one to go online in 2020.