The Future of Nuclear: A Special Report on Russia’s Cutting Edge Atom Industry
A special report by Dmitry Kodachenko
This is 64 tons of reactor steel. This red-hot workpiece was bent with a pressure of 12,000 ton-force using a special press. There's no other way to obtain a seamless plate of this alloy. The metal heated up to a temperature of more than 1000°C (1832F) was cooling down for 7 days. Atommash is a unique enterprise; very few can do such tough jobs. Nevertheless, this is how a job is done right; Russia is now entering a new era of energy. This is the bottom of a revolutionary state-of-the-art nuclear reactor, the VVER-TOI. Nothing of the kind has been produced in Russia before. Moreover, only a handful of countries have this kind of technology.
Vladimir Asmolov, Rosatom: "Here's the end of the reactor. We've made a new type of steel that can stand for 100 years. This is a low-nickel alloy. This work was awarded the State Prize 5 years ago. The work was done by Kurchatov Institute, TsNIIMash, and Prometey. I was an organizer of this project".
Vladimir Asmolov knows every detail of this large virtual model. He is the main ideologist of the VVER-TOI; the nuclear plant of the future. VVER, which is used in a nuclear power plant, stands for "water-water energetic reactor" TOI means the reactor is "standard optimized computerized." It means this is an all-purpose nuclear power plant with the best and the most widespread nuclear unit which can be built all over the world.
Vladimir Asmolov: "This is a so-called 6D model. 3D is understandable: we all live in a three-dimensional world. If we add a T-vector to it, meaning the time vector, we will come to a 4-dimensional world. But if we add the manpower resources, equipment supplies, logistics and so on, we'll get the required number of "dimensions".
The sites for such projects are being prepared. The pilot projects will be placed in Turkey and in Russia, near Kursk. But these 170-meter-high cooling towers aren't virtual reality. The Novovoronezh Nuclear Power Plant is the biggest testing lab in Russia. Its reactors are industrial unit prototypes that haven't been built anywhere else in the world. The domes of the nuclear units look like the roofs of a Martian space base.
Vyacheslav Chernyavsky: "These are air ducts of the passive heat removal system".
All the new structures at the NPP are built under the control of the field engineering system. This computer program is tested here as well. This is also a great part of the VVER-TOI Project. It saves time and money, counting every little screw necessary for building the nuclear unit.
Vyacheslav Chernyavsky, the Novovoronezh NPP: "52,000 tasks are included in the program. The schedule of these 52,000 milestones has its own individual deadlines, which are indicated in the contract with the client. So, we're following this schedule in order to meet the deadlines. The elements being assembled now are colored in blue, they aren't finished yet, these tasks are being carried out. The color red indicates all the tasks that are currently being scheduled. They're scheduled to be completed in the follow-up periods".
It's interesting that while the nuclear power plants of the future are huge, the nuclear fuel room is only 1% of the total area. All the rest is taken up by the safety systems.
Vladimir Asmolov: "In the safety system, each barrier is considered as the last one. Meaning "Not a single step back, Moscow is behind us." At every step, you have to prove that this barrier cannot be overcome. But the main point is: it should be proven in the project that a situation where the systems and these "soldiers at the security barriers" will never be needed".
Nuclear fuel is 2,000,000 times more efficient than gas or coal. We're talking about huge amounts of released heat. But this energy is highly concentrated. That's why the nuclear units in the VVER-TOI Project have a special air cooling system. The domes are hermetically sealed. There's only one opening: the fuel feed lock.
Fuel will be supplied to the reactor from the outside with a frame crane. Now we're going through this very passage. This is the transport lock. The interesting fact is this dome above us isn't the same dome we saw from the outside. It's the inner shell. It's 1.2 meters thick. The outer shell thickness is half a meter of reinforced concrete. The reactor vault is located in the center. All the fuel supply, charge and discharge operations will be done by robots in order to exclude any human factor. Three emergency water supply systems are placed inside and a special trap is installed under the reactor. Its task is to prevent the reactor core from melting. Despite the temperature of the inside of the trap being 2500°C (4532F), the temperature of the outer walls won't exceed 20°C (68F). During Project Meltdown, this fact was proven through scientific experiments which were carried out in Russia.
Vladimir Asmolov: "The entire world was shocked when we did the five experiments at 200 kg. It was considered impossible. Before that, such experiments were done with simulation liquids only at completely different temperatures".
It's the nuclear branch that leads both the science and industry to a new level. This is the Research Institute of Atomic Reactors in Dimitrovgrad, Ulyanovsk Oblast. Californium, the most expensive metal in the world, is produced here. Only 11 grams of the metal has ever been produced in the entire world. Each gram costs more than $250 million. The metal is expected to provide breakthroughs in medical science, geological surveying, and so on.
At the factory of Atommash in Volgodonsk, VVER-TOI reactors are being assembled. Only the highest ranking specialists are allowed to take part in the welding operations. The complicated bottom stamping for the Kursk NPP was done here for the first time.
Vladimir Shemuratov, deputy chief: "To stamp this kind of steel of this diameter and thickness deserves one more medal for our factory".
At last, the virtual simulation of the nuclear plant is one more unique Russian product in the field of programming. The model will coexist alongside the VVER-TOI nuclear power plants themselves.
Valery Limarenko, ASE President: "The control system of the NPP life-cycle is used at the stages of design, construction, operation, and decommissioning. This is a modern digital technology. It means there are a lot of people who can work in the system. It means the involvement of the client and the regulator in the process. And we offer these things when we enter the market".
China, Iran, India, Finland would like to obtain NPPs built according to the VVER-TOI Project. The company currently has 33 nuclear units on back order. Even the UK is considering an opportunity for construction. Russia is the only country in the world that has the skills and expertise needed for such a job.
"Now we're at the observation site where we can see the reactors of the 4th and the 3rd nuclear units”.
Our country's first pressurized water reactor was put into operation in the 1960s. It happened here at the Novovoronezh NPP. This is the only place in Russia where it's possible to see the whole line of VVERs. Here are the 3rd and the 4th that were constructed in the country for the first time. Even 50 years later, scientists say that PWR technology hasn't reached its limit.
Vladimir Asmolov: "During the production of nuclear energy, we spend nuclear fuel all the time. But this spent nuclear fuel isn't nuclear waste since there's plutonium inside, as in, new fuel. We burn U-235, which is only 0.6% of uranium. But using only this U-235, this 0.6% as we said, is the same as using the bark of the firewood. It's like you cut down a tree, burn the bark and leave the rest of the tree".
It may seem like science fiction now, but the term "spent nuclear fuel" may disappear in future. Nuclear energy may become a renewable energy source just like wind or solar energy. Nuclear energy projects that are being developed now will become the base for a technology breakthrough.
To make nuclear energy wasteless as much as possible is the main task of atomic scientists. This may be solved by the end of the century, as in, in a mere 80 years. The implementation of the VVER-TOI Project is a huge step in this direction.