On December 29, the Federal Environmental, Industrial and Nuclear Supervision Service (Rostechnadzor) issued a second additional service life extension license for Unit 4 of Novovoronezh NPP for 13 years. Thus, the unit will serve for 60 years instead of thirty years as designed.
Over 40 events, including those to improve safety, were carried out to prepare the unit to the second additional service life extension at Unit 4 with a VVER-440 reactor in the framework of the major overhaul and large-scale upgrading.
“In the framework of the large-scale upgrading we have developed and implemented brand new, modern safety systems. For example, now when there is the active cooling system, the passive one can be used. It consists of special tanks with boron solution which, when necessary, gets into the reactor core and cools it down. There was no such system in the initial design of the unit. Thus, now Unit 4 is fully compliant with most modern requirements in spite of the fact that it was designed in the 1960’s of the 20th century,” Andrey Dementiev, Deputy Director General and Director for Production and Operation of NPPs in Rosenergoatom JSC, noted.
