The cooling pond racks at the Leningrad NPP 1st power block under construction have been fully assembled. The team of the Assembling and Construction department No.90 have installed all 12 rectangular metal sets weighing over 18 tons each at their designed spots in the cooling pond and fixed them at the supporting structures welded into the floor inserts.

The racks are a part of the refueling system and are designed to house and to store spent fuel assemblies and hermetic casings with faulty fuel assemblies in the cooling pond on a long-term basis. Besides, it can store fresh fuel assemblies temporarily before they are loaded into a reactor. Each rack can house 61 fuel assembly and 2 hermetic casings. Thus, all in all, the cooling pond can store 732 fresh or spent fuel assemblies and 24 casings.


“The racks are separate transportable sections constructed in such a way that they are easy to assemble and to extract from a cooling pond in case its cladding needs a repair. The racks themselves do not need any maintenance: during their whole term of operation (which is 60 years), they will be proof against the cooling pond’s operation environment impact. The racks are safe and functional thanks to the way they are designed and the materials they are made of”, said Vitaly Shutikov, the head of the reactor workshop at the Leningrad NPP. He also added that in 5-10 years, when most of the afterheat runs out, any spent nuclear fuel will be transported to a Rosatom company involved in fuel recycling.

Shortly, once the refueling machine is launched operational, the team will resume works at the pond pit: the specialists will start loading the imitation zone in order to carry out pre-commissioning activities at the Leningrad NPP 1st power block under construction.

The Leningrad NPP is an affiliate company for Rosenergoatom Concern JSC. 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 JSC 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.