A number of representatives from the Rosenergoatom Joint-Stock Company, contracting and R&D companies took part in the workshop on the subject of ‘Preliminary outcomes of the 2019 maintenance campaign. Refining the NPP maintenance and repairs process’.

These workshops are held multiple times per year at one of the Russian nuclear power plants in order to evaluate a repair campaign.

The master report was presented by Alexander Krupskiy, the deputy director of NPP production and operation and the director of NPP technical maintenance, repairs, and assembly at the Rosenergoatom Joint-Stock Company. He announced the preliminary results and non-trivial issues faced during the 2019 maintenance campaign, as well as proposed ways to reduce the time lines for the NPP repairs before 2030.

Alexander stressed that, in order to maximize the efficiency of the power blocks’ maintenance strategy by 2030, the team needs to cut the repairs duration, set up centrally—anaged emergency supply, and facilitate the transition of the new VVER-1000 and VVER-1200 reactor power blocks to the designated operation of 10-years’ repairs cycle.

To store the emergency supply for the VVER reactor power blocks, a common storage is planned to be established at the Novovoronezh NPP site.

In the meantime, Evgeny Babushkin, chief maintenance engineer ad interim at the Novovoronezh NPP, noted that the NPP’s team is going to face a number of challenges next year: ‘By that time, the power block #7 will already have been put in operation, and late March we plan to use automatic equipment for non-destructive testing. We have experience doing such type of trials: this technique was used at the 6th power block for the first time. This is our main assignment, and the timelines and quality of the repairs will rely on it’.

He also expressed his gratitude to the management team for setting up such workshops stating that ‘face-to-face communication always conveys lots of thought-provoking information’.