For two weeks, the last-year students of the Belarusian National Technical University (BNTU) have been familiarizing themselves with the specifics of operating nuclear power blocks at the Smolensk NPP. These skills will help them to become hands-on professionals who can be in charge of reliable and safe operation of the Belarusian NPP. On February 19, the interns had a technical visit to the running power blocks.

‘The Smolensk NPP has been working together with BNTU since 2013. During this 7 years, our team has helped to train over 50 nuclear power specialists for Belarus’, Marina Shindina, a leading expert of the personnel development department at the Smolensk NPP, said. ‘We are also working a lot with 10 leading Russian universities and the Desnogorsk Energy College. Each year, we invite around 150 students to undertake on-the-job training’.

Anastacia Pavlovskaya, senior professor of the Heat power plants department at BNTU, believes that this type of training is extremely important. It lets students be well prepared for their graduation thesis, gives them lots of new knowledge and a unique opportunity to speak directly with the NPP staff, get the feeling of how the production works.

‘Our students ask tons of questions, and the Smolensk NPP training center instructors give comprehensive responses, go an extra mile to cover the topics in detail’, Anastacia Pavlovskaya noted.

This is the fifth group of nuclear power students from Belarus visiting the Smolensk NPP. As a part of their on-the-job training, the students get a handle of producing electric power ‘the nuclear way’, study the structure of a reactor, review the plant’s heat grid, steam turbine facilities, the way electric and water-chemical halls operate. A technical tour to the running power blocks is the most memorable experience. The aspiring professionals noted that their biggest impression was how clean, neat and disciplined the production looks like.

‘We have visited the turbine and the reactor hall, saw the main circulating pump. We have been very imporessed with what we saw, and it is clear for us now that the nuclear power plant pays close attention to the security aspects’, Andrey Puliak, a BNTU student, said.

It is important to note that the first Belarusian NPP is now being constructed in the Grodno region based on an innovative 3+ generation VVER-1200 design.,