The installation of the inner containment dome (ICD) made the 1st power block of the Kursk NPP-2 as tall as 36 meters. This is the third circle of the ICD, and the experts claim it has a very complicated structure.

‘The third circle pocketing the central hall has built-in items for the transport lock and the personnel lock. Some sections of the inner containment dome are not standard, their center of gravity being displaced, which is why we were using a unique technology for the designated position installation and further assembly’, Alexey Volnov, the chief engineer of the Kursk NPP-2, explained.

The inner containment dome is the primary element of the reactor facility sealed enclosure, which is 61.7 meters tall, and its wall width is 1.2 meters. Compared to the mass-produced Russian power blocks of earlier designs where ICDs where erected, too, the VVER-TOI containment can handle higher pressure.

The third ICD circle is 14 meters tall and consists of 11 section, each weighing up to 70 tons. The total weight of the circle is over 800 tons. As an example, previous circles would contain 10 sections, weigh 50 tons on average with the height of 9 meters. 

The ICD sections were manufactured and installed by the team of OOO Trest RosSEM.

‘When installing the third circle, we followed the top-notch approaches towards penetration concreting and alignment, which enabled us to deliver the results on time’, Alexey Smirnov, the director of the OOO Trest RosSEM Kursk branch, said. 

These approaches can be used for other construction sites, not just for the Kursk NPP-2 2nd power block.

The next stage following the reinforcement of the ICD third circle at its designated place is the concreting, which would require 2,700 cubic meters of concrete. The services on the ICD third circle reinforcement are due to be completed by December 2020.