Beloyarsk NPP - work and research

In the Urals, 40 km east of Yekaterinburg, is one of the first industrial nuclear power plants in the Soviet Union. It began to be built in 1955 and was named "Beloyarsk NPP". In 1964, the first power unit AMB-100 "Atomic Peaceful Bolshoi" with power of 100 MW gave electricity. Since 1967, in the second work, AMB-200. The third unit, the BN-600 "Fast Neutrons" with a capacity of 600 MW, was commissioned in April 1980. Today, the power plant has three nuclear reactors. In 1981 and 1987, the first two were stopped. In the third left. Specialists call fast neutron reactors "breeders", i.e. "Breeders". They were used to produce weapons-grade plutonium from uranium. All Western countries for various reasons, similar reactors stopped. And only Beloyarsk NPP has the last such industrial power unit in the world. The reliability and safety of it is very high.

Briefly about the reactor. In its working area, fuel assemblies are assembled-tubes made of zirconium. They contain nuclear fuel pills, usually U235. When dividing fuel in tubes, a lot of heat is generated, which is removed from the hot zone (the first circuit) by molten metal (either lead) or water under immense pressure (so as not to boil). Sodium in this case has a high radioactivity; So that it can not be taken out, the heat is transferred to the second circuit, in which there is also metal or water under high pressure. Here, the heating medium heats the liquid of the third circuit to boiling, and the steam is supplied to the turbines. Later, there were designs with water in all contours. Metal-metal-water reactors are theoretically more dangerous than water-water reactors. But they are more compact, which allows them to be used in transport. The Beloyarsk NPP in the BN-600 reactor has a metallic coolant in the first two circuits. The latter is steam-water with sodium vapor superheater.

Beloyarsk NPP-2 is the second (or, to be more exact, the fourth) power plant in turn. Four years of operation of the experimental unit BN-600 and processing of the received information led to the decision to add two more - BN-800 and BN-1200. After the Chernobyl accident these works stopped, but the project continued to be corrected. In 2007 the construction was resumed.

Block BN-800 is intended for further development of the technology of "fast neutrons", and the positive results obtained on it will allow:

- to form a closed fuel cycle of nuclear power plants;

- more than 50 times increase the processing of already spent uranium, providing fuel to the country's nuclear power plants ;

- partially utilize nuclear waste, use non-radioactive uranium U238 from the dumps;

- Put into circulation the plutonium from the decommissioned nuclear warheads.

Beloyarsk NPP, taking into account the new power units by 2022, will have a capacity of 2,600 MW. In the coming years, the construction of Block No. 5 - BN-1200 will begin.

The commissioning of several BN-1200 reactors at this and other nuclear power plants and the inclusion of nuclear fuel producing enterprises in the cycle form a system for its production. So Russia will provide itself and friendly countries with this fuel for hundreds of years. Beloyarsk NPP is to occupy a fitting place in this cycle, because On its blocks of different types, new solutions in the energy of a peaceful atom are being experimentally developed .