10 thousand spent fuel assemblies were placed into concrete and metal containers at the Leningrad NPP nuclear fuel storage and handling department. During the whole operation of the four power blocks, around 65 thousand fuel magazines will be disembarked from the active zone. That said, more than one-sixth of them have been prepared for storage, which can later serve as fuel for new NPPs.

The team has managed to achieve such impressive results within just four and a half years after the NPP started using the new “dry” way of fuel storage, which is more reliable and environmentally friendly compared to the “wet” one. “We will work more efficiently now because the first few years were the launch time for us, and we didn’t manage to achieve any stable pace then”, said Vladimir Simonov, the head of the workshop.

Since 2014, the system of spent nuclear fuel storage at containers has been working like a charm: 12 fuel assemblies are disembarked here every 24 hours, with one container loaded weekly. This pace was established thanks to the equipment modernization and the successful implementation of the efficiency improvement projects based on the Rosatom production system.

The workshop team successfully meets its objectives of increasing their productivity in all realms by 10%. The main goal for them is to transfer all spent fuel into “dry” storage, that is, to disembark fuel assemblies and to load them onto containers. At the moment, they are 78 fuel magazines ahead of schedule.

As of now, only 32 thousand fuel assemblies out of 36 thousand are still remaining, with 4 thousand fuel magazines having been transported to the Zheleznogorskiy mining and chemical plant’s storage.

The Leningrad NPP is an affiliate company for Rosenergoatom Concern OJSC. The plant is based in the city of Sosnovy Bor, 40 km to the west from Saint Petersburg at the Gulf of Finland shore. The Leningrad NPP is the first Russian nuclear power plant having RBMK-1000 reactors (uranium-graphite channel-type thermal neutron reactors). The NPP exploits 4 power blocks with the electric capacity of 1000 megawatt each. Also, pursuant to the NPP-2006 project, 1,2 VVER-1200 power blocks included into The State Atomic Energy Corporation ROSATOM long-term plan are being constructed. Rosenergoatom Concern OJSC is the owner and developer of the project. Holding TITAN-2 is the primary contractor. ATOMPROEKT is the general designer.


Leningrad  NPP Information and Public Relations Administration.