Russian Government Plans to Build 21 New Nuclear Reactors by 2030

The Russian government, via its official online portal for legal information, has just recently unveiled plans to build 21 new nuclear power reactors across nine power stations by the year 2030. The plans include the construction of five new nuclear power stations housing two reactors each; three new power plants at locations where other nuclear facilities already exist, and the addition of another reactor at an existing nuclear power plant.

NucNet gives a detailed explanation of the five new nuclear power plants planned to be built in the next couple of decades. They are the:

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•    "Kostroma" in the Kostroma region, about 350 kilometres northeast of Moscow. It will consist of two VVER-1200 reactor units.
•    "Nizhny Novgorod" in the Nizhny Novgorod region, about 330 kilometres east of Moscow. The site has been in the planning stage since 2008 and the location that has been chosen is in the Navashinsky district in the southwest of Nizhny Novgorod. The new station will consist of two VVER-1200 reactor units.
•    "Tatar" in the Republic of Tatarstan, Volga district, western Russia. The station will be sited in the Kamskiy region, 130 kilometres east of Kazan, and will consist of two VVER-1200 reactor units.
•    "Seversky" in the closed town of Seversk, about 20 kilometres north of Tomsk in south-central Russia. The station will be built near the Sibirskaya nuclear power plant, which in 1954 was the first industrial-scale nuclear plant in the then-USSR and was decommissioned in 2008. The new station will consist of two VVER-1200 reactor units.
•    "South Ural" in the Kaslinsky district of the Chelyabinskaya oblast, about 200 kilometres southeast of Yekaterinburg. It will consist of two Generation IV BN-1200 sodium-cooled fast reactor units.

The three units to be built at locations where existing plants already operate are planned to replace power stations that are approaching the end of their operational lifetimes. The Kola, Kursk, and Smolensk power stations will be replaced, with a two reactor unit installed at Kola, and four reactor units each at Kursk and Smolensk.

BN-800 type sodium cooled fast-breed reactor.

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The reactor to be added to the existing nuclear plant will be a Generation IV BN-1200 type sodium-cooled fast reactor installed at the Beloyarsk nuclear power plant. Already in operation at the site is a BN-600 type reactor, and a BN-800 type should be completed next year. They are use mixed uranium-plutonium fuel which helps to reduce the country’s plutonium stockpiles by using nuclear waste from other nuclear power plants as fuel.

By. Charles Kennedy of Oilprice.com