A major operation has been completed at the Leningrad NPP-2 2nd VVER-1200 power block under construction: using the block’s control room, the first unit of the reactor hall equipment was tested as the heat carrier storage system pump electric motor was idled. The operating team at the Leningrad NPP-2 checked the electric motor twice: from a reactor control engineer’s work place and from the tile control panels. The operation was conducted using designed energy supplies and standard automated control and process management systems.

According to Pavel Tikhonov, the operation lead and a shift leader of the plant’s power block, the first mechanism switch from the power block’s control room was a success: ‘We have verified that the equipment under trial was assembled and commissioned properly, and that the automated control system operate as needed. The electric motor is functional, its thermal and vibratory conditions are fine. The electric parameters of the equipment were confirmed, too. Now we can connect it to the circulating pump to then verify the whole set under load’.

Mikhail Kilin, a shift leader at the Leningrad NPP reactor hall, explained that the pump under trial would drive the heat carrier into the reactor assembly’s primary circuit when the power block is under operation.

‘Today, we have checked the main pump. What we need to do next is to verify the backup pump. This equipment will be used for all key operations during the individual checks and trials of the power block’s technological systems, including but not limited to the liquid release over the open reactor’, Mikhail Kilin added.

The liquid release is scheduled for early May, and this operation will take the whole month. During that, the team will test all the equipment comprising the reactor facility and perform the post-assembly pipelines cleaning from mechanical impurities (sand, dust, slack coal, etc.)