In September 2016, the number of people working at the Kursk NPP-2 construction site has exceeded 800 for the first time. They are employed by around 18 contracting companies at 25 construction facilities.

This fact was announced on September 20th at the regular briefing dedicated to the Kursk NPP’s 1st and 2nd power blocks construction.

Nevertheless, specialists believe that there is still not enough construction and installation staff at the construction site. In order to resolve this problem, the meeting participants have identified several steps to facilitate the number of personnel required.


“We will expand our contractors’ efforts at the construction site and bring more people from our affiliate companies”, Sergey Olontsev, the Senior Vice President responsible for NIAEP’s Russian project manager said as a representative of the general contractor.

He also noted that the works on preparing the sand and the sand-and-gravel sole for the Kursk NPP-2 1st block’s foundation are in progress. “Generally, I see very positive prospectives”, he said.

Another important topic of the briefing was how to prevent personal injuries and to guarantee job safety. According to Viacheslav Fedyukin, the Kursk NPP director, they will impose very strict rules, e.g., a company violating the safety requirements will be banned from work even if it might result in production problems.

“I’d rather have fewer people on the site than to have someone injured”, Mr. Fedyukin stressed.

The Kursk NPP-2 is a replacement station for the currently operating Kursk nuclear power plant’s power blocks taken out of service. Pursuant to The Russian Federation energy land-use planning scheme valid until 2030 and approved by the Government of the Russian Federation in November 2013, the four NPP-2 replacement power blocks operating a new-generation VVER reactor will be located in the Kursk Region. The operational launch of the first two NPP-2 power blocks is planned to be synchronized with the running nuclear power stations’ power blocks taken out of service. The OJSC Concern Rosatom is the building owner and the technical customer for the project. JSC "NIAEP" acts as the general designer and the general contractor.

* VVER-TOI is a typical optimized and computerized two-block NPP project with a VVER-1300 (water-cooled power reactor), a further step in NPP-2006 project development. The goal of this development is to elaborate a typical VVER NPP power block project optimized according to the technical and economic parameters and completed within the contemporary IT environment. VVER-TOI is developed based on the project materials elaborated for the NPP-2006 project and with due account for the experience the industry bodies have accumulated during the latest VVER NPP projects (Novovoronezh NPP-2). The VVER-TOI project takes advantage of the best practices in VVER NPP construction and maintenance activities from all over the world.

Kursk NPP  Information and Public Relations Administration.