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Nuclear Renaissance
Published in William J. Nuttall, Nuclear Renaissance, 2022
The first unit of the twin-unit Ostravets plant was connected to the grid on 7 November 2020, the 103rd anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution. Ostravets-1 is a 1,200 MWe Russian designed and built. Water Water Energetic Reactor, widely known globally via the Russian inspired acronym ‘VVER’. The second unit, Ostravets-2, achieved first criticality in October 2020 and hence, in January 2021, is also close to operations.
Nuclear power and safety policy in Russia
Published in David Toke, Geoffrey Chun-Fung Chen, Antony Froggatt, Richard Connolly, Nuclear Power in Stagnation, 2021
David Toke, Geoffrey Chun-Fung Chen, Antony Froggatt, Richard Connolly
The Ministry of Medium Machine Building developed a range of products. Two main reactor types were employed in NPPs across the Soviet Union. The first and most widely produced type was the water-cooled, graphite-moderated reactor, known as high-power channel reactors (reaktor bolshoy moshchnosti kanalnyy), or to use the Russian acronym, RBMK reactors. A total of 15 different versions of the RBMK reactor were installed between 1971 and 1987, including the reactor at the centre of the accident at the Chernobyl NPP in 1986. The second type of reactor was the pressurised water reactor (PWR), or to use the Russian abbreviation – VVER (vodo-vodyanoi energetiche sky reactor).
Nuclear Energy
Published in Efstathios E. Michaelides, Energy, the Environment, and Sustainability, 2018
The VVER reactor is essentially a PWR reactor that was designed and operated in the Soviet Union. Several countries that were part of the former Soviet Union and their trading partners (e.g., Lithuania, Russia, Kazakhstan, Poland, and Bulgaria) still operate RBMK and IGG reactors.
From “Inherently Safe” to “Proliferation Resistant”: New Perspectives on Reactor Designs
Published in Nuclear Technology, 2021
Back in the 1950s, once the idea of controlled nuclear fission gained traction with engineers, there seemed to be no limit to their imagination. Early designers experimented with a variety of materials to cool and moderate their machines, with shapes of fuel elements, sizes of cores, numbers of loops, and many other parameters. Engineers built models, prototypes, and sometimes research reactors. In most countries, however, this variety soon thinned out and only a few, arguably the most promising, designs received further support and funding. The Geneva conferences on the “peaceful uses of atomic energy” helped this process along by showcasing different options and reaching international consensus on a preferred design for large, commercial power reactors, at the time the pressurized light water design that became known as PWR in the West and VVER in the USSR.aVVER stands for vodo-vodianoi energeticheskii reactor, water [cooled], water [moderated] power reactor.
Improvement of the VVER-1200 Fuel Cycle by Introducing Thorium with Different Fissile Material in Blanket-Seed Assembly
Published in Nuclear Science and Engineering, 2019
The VVER-1200 has several potential safety advantages than other reactors, such as a passive decay heat removal system, a passive containment cooling system, and a passive hydrogen removal system.14Table I illustrates the main dimensions and operating parameters of the VVER-1200. The traditional fuel for VVER-1200 assemblies is UO2 with different enrichment. In this work, the SB assembly design is suggested to improve the economy and safety performance of the VVER-1200. The seed rods and the blanket rods were put in the same fuel assembly. This design enables us to use different fissile materials in the seed region while only 232Th is used in the blanket region.