Russia’s regulator authority Rostekhnadzor has granted nuclear power company Rosatom a licence to begin construction of the first two reactor units at the Kola Nuclear Power Plant-2. However, the region will continue to rely on ageing reactors—whose operating lives have already been extended twice—for at least another decade before the replacement units come online.
According to the plant’s press service, the project’s general contractor, Titan-2 Concern, will shortly begin preparatory work at the site. This includes clearing the area, levelling the ground, establishing construction facilities and building access roads. Kola NPP-2 will be the first nuclear power station in Russia to use VVER-600 medium-capacity reactors, each with an electrical output of 600 MW. According to Aleksei Likhachev, the project is intended to boost economic development in Russia’s Arctic regions while supplying electricity to new industrial projects. More than 2,500 workers are expected to be employed during construction, while the completed plant is projected to create several hundred permanent jobs.
Under Russia’s updated national power generation strategy, the four reactor units are scheduled to enter service in 2035, 2037, 2042 and 2043, respectively. As Barents Observer has previously reported, plans to replace the existing Kola Nuclear Power Plant date back to the early 1990s. The station’s oldest VVER-440/230 reactors were originally designed for a 30-year operating life and were due to be shut down in 2003 and 2004. Instead, Russia’s nuclear regulator, Rostekhnadzor, repeatedly extended their operating licences following modernisation work. The regulator first granted each reactor an additional 15 years of operation before extending their licences for a second time.
The plant’s first two reactors remain the only civilian nuclear reactors in Russia to have received two lifetime extensions. Unit 1 is licensed to operate until July 2033, while Unit 2 may remain in service until 2034. The VVER-600 represents a new reactor design that has yet to enter commercial operation. While it uses conventional pressurised water reactor technology, it is designed to run on MOX (mixed oxide) fuel—a blend of plutonium recovered from spent nuclear fuel and depleted uranium—instead of standard uranium fuel. As preparations for Kola NPP-2 gather pace, the existing station continues to operate at elevated output.
During a recent visit by Rosatom executives, television footage captured the control room displays for Unit 4. The instruments indicated the reactor was generating 470 MW, equivalent to 106,8 per cent of its original design capacity of 440 MW. The oldest reactors at the Kola plant, commissioned in 1973 and 1974, will not be permanently shut down until all four units of Kola NPP-2 have entered commercial operation—a process that is not expected to be completed before the mid-2040s.
Source: The independent Barents Observer