Power unit No. 4 with the BN-800 reactor at the Beloyarsk NPP was brought to the nominal power level after the completion of the latest scheduled preventive maintenance.

The specialists performed the replacement of the removable part of the main circulation pump, current repairs of the turbine and steam generator. The most large-scale work was associated with monitoring the state of the metal of sodium coolant pipelines.

“BN-800 is a unique power unit that has no analogues in the world. During its construction, new equipment and new materials were used. Six years after the start-up of the unit, we checked how operation affected the metal of pipelines, studied the condition of more than 700 welded joints of the secondary circuit. This is a colossal amount of work, it was necessary to make sure the reliability and safety of our equipment,” said Ilya Filin, deputy chief engineer for operation of the BN-800.

During the repair, fuel assemblies with innovative uranium-plutonium fuel were loaded into the reactor core (MOX fuel manufacturer - Federal State Unitary Enterprise GCC (Zheleznogorsk, Krasnoyarsk Territory), fuel supplier - TVEL JSC). MOX fuel makes it possible to involve in production a previously unused uranium isotope, which increases the fuel base of nuclear energy by dozens of times and makes it practically waste-free. This is the principle of a closed nuclear fuel cycle. In comparison with enriched uranium, traditional for nuclear energy, the raw materials for the production of MOX fuel pellets are plutonium oxide produced in power reactors and depleted uranium oxide (obtained by defluorination of depleted uranium hexafluoride - DUHF, the so-called secondary "tails" of enrichment production. Now the reactor core is 60% filled with "the fuel of the future". Two power units of the Beloyarsk NPP are in operation with a total electrical load of 1485 MW, which is about 16% of all electricity generated in the Sverdlovsk Region. The radiation situation in the territory of the Beloyarsk NPP is at the level of natural values of the natural background.