The reactor pressure vessel for France's Flamanville 3 EPR has been delivered to the nuclear power plant construction site. Meanwhile, Russia's Izhora Works has shipped of the VVER-1200 reactor vessel for Novovoronezh II-2.

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The reactor pressure vessel for France’s Flamanville 3 EPR has been delivered to the nuclear power plant construction site. Meanwhile, Russia’s Izhora Works has shipped of the VVER-1200 reactor vessel for Novovoronezh II-2.

The Flamanville 3 RPV set out from AREVA’s Saint Marcel heavy components facility at the beginning of September. It was shipped by sea to the port of Diélette on the northwest coast of France, before being transported to the nuclear power plant site.

The component, which weighs around, took 50,000 hours to design and manufacture, AREVA said.

The next step will be to install the Flamanville 3 vessel in the reactor building, AREVA and EDF said in a joint statement. Work will also begin on the assembly of the reactor coolant system for the EPR, which is due to start-up in late 2016. Civil engineering work at the site is currently 95% complete.

Novovoronezh

Also on 7 October, Izhora Works, part of Russia’s OMZ Group, announced that it has shipped the reactor vessel for the second unit at Novovoronezh 2, a VVER-1200 design.

The VVER-1200 reactor is based on the AES-2006 plant, but includes a number of design improvements that provide enhanced security, improve technical and economic performance and increase the operating life by up to 60 years.

Izhora Works, which is the only Russian producer of reactor equipment for the VVER-1200, has manufactured three VVER-1200 reactor vessels to date. The first one was shipped to unit 1 at Novovoronezh NPP-2 in May 2011 and the second to Leningrad NPP-2 in autumn 2012.

 


The EPR reactor vessel arrives at the Flamanville site (Source: AREVA)